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On the fifth of December 2024, a major newspaper published the headline “Insurance CEO Shot Dead In Manhattan”. The report went on to state that Brian Thompson was “fatally wounded from behind in Midtown Manhattan by a assailant who then calmly departed the scene”. The daytime killing was indeed both cold and shocking. 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. Social media blew up. One comment stated: “All jokes aside … no one here is the judge of who deserves to live or die. That’s the job of the artificial intelligence system the insurance company designed to increase earnings on your health.”

Five days later, Luigi Mangione, a handsome, 26-year-old University of Pennsylvania graduate with a master’s in computer science, was apprehended at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He awaits trial on federal and state charges of murder, with prosecutors seeking the death penalty. So what is his background? And what drove the accused offense? These are the issues John H Richardson seeks to resolve in an investigation that explores broader themes, too.

The Making of a Subject

A writer for a major publication, Richardson devoted considerable time to studying the groups that lurk in the dark corners of the internet, writing stories about people “plagued by genuine concerns about an end-times scenario”. To reveal “the making” of his subject, Richardson first examines Mangione’s extensive reading. We learn that “[when] he was taken into custody, Luigi had a list of 295 books on Goodreads”. Their content ranged from climate change to masculinity, along with a “emphasis on his own personal growth, both body and mind”. Additionally, Richardson analyzes his correspondence with influencers and authors as well as his many posts on digital networks. These primary sources, meant to paint a portrait of Mangione, instead present him as an amorphous figure. Richardson attempts to explain this by proposing that “Luigi’s mystery, in fact, is what gives him a little of that old deceiver’s charm”. Here, as elsewhere, Richardson attempts to cast 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’

The Meaning Behind the Crime

As for “the meaning” of the title, Richardson uses as a clue three words – “postpone”, “refuse” and “remove”, engraved on the ammunition left behind at the crime scene. These are the terms occasionally employed by health insurance companies to reject claims. 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 lie 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 destroy us, or both.

Missing Pieces

Conspicuous by their absence from the book are conversations with the key individuals. Richardson asked, of course, but never expected access to Mangione himself. And his relatives made it clear that they had decided against speaking to the media in advance of the trial. Another glaring gap is any detailed data about the deceased, Thompson, though we learn that under his guidance, from the early 2020s, company earnings rose significantly.

Ambiguous Findings

By the conclusion, the audience has little insight of Mangione’s character or what might have motivated his accused actions. More troubling, Richardson’s obvious sympathy for him creates the uncomfortable impression of having been exposed to a veiled endorsement of an assassination. In the book’s closing remarks, Richardson delivers his mythical interpretation: “We’ve entered a time of fables, the mad king, the beast in the labyrinth and the emperor without clothes.” In that tale “outlaw heroes come with a appealing vow … They arrive in periods of unrest, when the people are suffering and everything is confusing anymore.”

One thing is clear: as Mangione’s legal representatives works to have accusations that could lead to the ultimate sentence dismissed, any reference of fables, folk heroes, heroes or villains will not be admissible as evidence in support for this handsome young man with a “jawline … and lips … out of a Caravaggio painting” facing judgment for murder.