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On December 5, 2024, a major newspaper published the headline “Insurance CEO Gunned Down 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 truly cold and shocking. But numerous US citizens had a different response: for those who faced insurance rejections or struggled with medical bills, the news felt like a release. Social media blew up. One post read: “All jokes aside … no one here is the judge of who deserves to live or die. That’s the job of the AI algorithm the insurance company created to increase earnings on your health.”

Less than a week after, Luigi Mangione, a good-looking, twenty-six-year-old University of Pennsylvania graduate with a master’s in computer science, was arrested at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He faces court proceedings on federal and state charges of murder, with the district attorney seeking the capital punishment. So who is Mangione? And what might have motivated the alleged crime? These are the questions John H Richardson seeks to resolve in an inquiry that delves into wider topics, too.

Understanding the Person

A writer for a major publication, Richardson spent years researching the groups that exist in the hidden parts of the internet, producing articles about people “cursed with realistic fears about an apocalyptic future”. To uncover “the making” of his subject, Richardson first examines Mangione’s wide-ranging book list. We learn that “[when] he was taken into custody, Luigi had a list of nearly three hundred titles on Goodreads”. Their content ranged from climate change to masculinity, along with a “focus on his own self-improvement, both physical and mental”. Additionally, Richardson analyzes his communications with influencers and authors as well as his many posts on digital networks. These original materials, intended to depict a picture of Mangione, instead present him as an unclear character. Richardson tries to justify this by suggesting that “Luigi’s mystery, in fact, is what gives him a little of that old deceiver’s charm”. Throughout the book, Richardson attempts to cast his subject in archetypal terms.

Mangione is deeply anxious about the world around him, one where ‘change is rapid 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 – “delay”, “deny” and “remove”, engraved on the ammunition left behind at the crime scene. These are the terms occasionally employed by health insurance companies to deny coverage. He examines the indication Mangione had a chronic back condition, which might have provided motive for an attack, but finds no proof; instead, what significance there is seems to rest in Mangione’s philosophical dread 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 eventually either take control, or destroy us, or both.

Missing Pieces

Notably missing from the book are conversations with the key individuals. Richardson made requests, but never expected access to Mangione himself. And his family made it clear that they had decided against speaking to the press in advance of the trial. Another flashing-yellow omission is any detailed data about the deceased, Thompson, though we learn that under his leadership, from 2021 to 2023, UHC profits rose significantly.

Unclear Conclusions

By book’s end, the audience has no clear understanding of Mangione’s character or what could have driven his accused actions. Worse still, Richardson’s obvious sympathy for him creates the disturbing feeling of having been privy to a subtle approval of an assassination. In the book’s final lines, Richardson delivers his fairytale assessment: “We’ve entered a time of fables, the mad king, the beast in the labyrinth and the emperor without clothes.” In that fable “outlaw heroes come with a appealing vow … They arrive in times of social turmoil, when the population is in pain and everything is confusing anymore.”

One thing is certain: as Mangione’s legal representatives continues in its attempts have charges that could lead to the ultimate sentence dismissed, any reference of fables, folk heroes, champions or villains will not be allowed in court in support for this attractive individual with a “features reminiscent of classical art” facing judgment for murder.