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On the fifth of December 2024, a major newspaper ran 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 killer who then walked coolly away”. The daytime killing was indeed both cold and shocking. But many Americans had a different response: for those who faced insurance rejections or struggled with medical bills, the news felt cathartic. Social media blew up. One comment read: “All jokes aside … no one here is the judge of who should live or perish. That’s the job of the AI algorithm the insurance company created to increase earnings on your health.”

Five days later, Luigi Mangione, a handsome, twenty-six-year-old University of Pennsylvania graduate with a graduate degree in computing, 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 death penalty. So what is his background? And what drove the alleged crime? These are the issues John H Richardson seeks to resolve in an inquiry that delves into wider topics, too.

The Making of a Subject

A writer for a major publication, Richardson devoted considerable time to studying the communities that exist in the hidden parts of the internet, writing stories about people “cursed with realistic fears about an end-times scenario”. To uncover “the making” of his subject, Richardson first reviews Mangione’s wide-ranging book list. We learn that “[when] he was arrested, Luigi had a list of 295 books on a reading platform”. Their subject matter ranged from climate change to masculinity, along with a “emphasis on his own personal growth, both body and mind”. Furthermore, Richardson sifts through 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 render him an amorphous figure. Richardson attempts to explain this by proposing that “Luigi’s elusiveness, in fact, is what gives him a little of that old deceiver’s charm”. Throughout the book, Richardson tries to frame his subject in archetypal terms.

Mangione is profoundly worried 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”, “deny” and “remove”, engraved on the bullets left behind at the crime scene. These are the terms occasionally employed by medical insurers to reject claims. He looks at the indication Mangione suffered from 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 philosophical dread about the world around him, one where “the pace is quickening whether we like it or not, sliding faster and faster 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 interviews with the key individuals. Richardson asked, of course, but did not anticipate access to Mangione himself. And his family 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 leadership, from 2021 to 2023, UHC profits increased by 33%.

Ambiguous Findings

By book’s end, the audience has little insight of Mangione’s personality or what might have motivated his accused actions. Worse still, Richardson’s apparent empathy for him creates the disturbing feeling of having been privy to a veiled endorsement of an targeted killing. In the book’s final lines, Richardson presents his fairytale assessment: “We’ve entered a era of stories, the insane ruler, the monster in the maze and the emperor without clothes.” In that fable “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 defence team continues in its attempts have charges that could lead to the death penalty dismissed, any mention of myths, Robin Hoods, heroes or villains will not be allowed in court in defence of this attractive individual with a “features reminiscent of classical art” facing judgment for murder.