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On the fifth of December 2024, a major newspaper ran the front-page story “Insurance CEO Shot Dead In Manhattan”. The report then noted that Brian Thompson was “fatally wounded from behind in Midtown Manhattan by a killer who then calmly departed the scene”. The daytime killing was indeed both chilling and disturbing. But many Americans had a different response: for those who had been denied health insurance or struggled with medical bills, the news felt like a release. Online platforms erupted. One comment read: “All jokes aside … no one here is the judge of who should live or perish. That’s the job of the artificial intelligence system the insurance company designed to maximize profits on your health.”

Less than a week after, Luigi Mangione, a good-looking, 26-year-old University of Pennsylvania graduate with a master’s in computer science, was apprehended at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He faces court proceedings on criminal counts of murder, with prosecutors seeking the death penalty. So what is his background? And what might have motivated the alleged crime? These are the questions John H Richardson seeks to resolve in an inquiry that explores broader themes, too.

Understanding the Person

A writer for a major publication, Richardson spent years researching the communities that exist in the hidden parts of the internet, producing articles about people “cursed with realistic fears about an apocalyptic future”. To reveal “the making” of his subject, Richardson first examines Mangione’s extensive reading. We learn that “[when] he was arrested, Luigi had a list of nearly three hundred titles on a reading platform”. Their subject matter covered climate change to masculinity, along with a “focus on his own personal growth, both body and mind”. Furthermore, Richardson analyzes his communications with influencers and authors as well as his many updates on social media. These primary sources, intended to depict a picture of Mangione, instead render him an amorphous figure. Richardson attempts to explain this by suggesting that “Luigi’s mystery, in fact, is what gives him a little of that old trickster magic”. Throughout the book, Richardson tries to frame his subject in symbolic roles.

Mangione is deeply anxious about the world around him, one where ‘everything is accelerating whether we like it or not’

Interpreting the Incident

As for “the meaning” of the title, Richardson takes as his lead three words – “delay”, “deny” and “depose”, etched on the bullets left behind at the crime scene. These are the terms occasionally employed by health insurance companies to deny coverage. He examines the evidence Mangione had a long-term spinal issue, which might have provided motive for an attack, but discovers no confirmation; instead, what meaning there is seems to rest in Mangione’s existential anxiety about the world around him, one where “the pace is quickening whether we like it or not, moving rapidly to the edge”; a world where the general belief seems to be that AI is going to ultimately either take control, or eliminate humanity, or both.

Gaps in the Narrative

Conspicuous by their absence from the book are interviews with the key individuals. Richardson made requests, but never expected access to Mangione himself. And his family made it clear that they had chosen not to talk to the press in prior to the trial. Another glaring gap is any significant information about the deceased, Thompson, though we learn that under his guidance, from the early 2020s, UHC profits increased by 33%.

Unclear Conclusions

By book’s end, the reader has little insight of Mangione’s personality or what might have motivated his accused actions. Worse still, Richardson’s apparent empathy for him gives the reader the uncomfortable impression of having been privy to a veiled endorsement of an assassination. In the book’s final lines, Richardson presents his mythical interpretation: “We’ve entered a era of stories, the mad king, the monster in the maze and the naked leader.” In that fable “outlaw heroes come with a appealing vow … They arrive in periods of unrest, when the population is in pain and nothing makes sense anymore.”

One thing is certain: as Mangione’s legal representatives works to have accusations that could lead to the ultimate sentence thrown out, any reference of myths, Robin Hoods, heroes or monsters will not be allowed in court in support for this handsome young man with a “jawline … and lips … out of a Caravaggio painting” facing judgment for murder.