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On December 5, 2024, a leading publication ran the headline “Insurance CEO Shot Dead In Manhattan”. The report went on to state that Brian Thompson was “shot in the back in Midtown Manhattan by a assailant who then calmly departed the scene”. The murder in broad daylight was indeed both cold and shocking. But many Americans had a different response: for those who had been denied health insurance or faced exorbitant healthcare costs, the news felt like a release. Online platforms erupted. One post 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 designed to maximize profits 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 apprehended at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He awaits trial on criminal counts of murder, with the district attorney seeking the death penalty. So who is Mangione? And what might have motivated the accused offense? These are the issues John H Richardson attempts to answer in an inquiry that delves into wider topics, too.

Understanding the Person

A journalist for Esquire magazine, Richardson devoted considerable time to studying the groups that exist in the hidden parts 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 reviews Mangione’s wide-ranging book list. We learn that “[when] he was arrested, Luigi had a list of 295 books on Goodreads”. Their content covered climate change to masculinity, along with a “focus on his own self-improvement, both body and mind”. Furthermore, Richardson analyzes his correspondence with online personalities and authors as well as his many posts on digital networks. These primary sources, intended to depict a picture of Mangione, instead render him an amorphous figure. Richardson tries to justify this by suggesting that “Luigi’s elusiveness, in fact, is what gives him a little of that old trickster magic”. Here, as elsewhere, Richardson tries to frame 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 takes as his lead three words – “delay”, “refuse” and “depose”, 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 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 philosophical dread about the world around him, one where “everything is accelerating whether we like it or not, sliding faster and faster to the edge”; a world where the consensus seems to be that AI is going to ultimately either take control, or destroy us, or both.

Gaps in the Narrative

Conspicuous by their absence from the book are conversations with the key individuals. Richardson made requests, but did not anticipate access to Mangione himself. And his relatives stated explicitly that they had chosen not to talk to the press in advance of the trial. Another flashing-yellow omission is any significant information about the victim, Thompson, though we learn that under his guidance, from 2021 to 2023, UHC profits rose significantly.

Ambiguous Findings

By the conclusion, the reader has no clear understanding of Mangione’s character or what might have motivated his accused actions. Worse still, Richardson’s obvious sympathy for him gives the reader the disturbing feeling of having been privy to a subtle approval of an targeted killing. In the book’s closing remarks, Richardson delivers his mythical interpretation: “We’ve entered a time of fables, the insane ruler, the monster in the maze and the naked leader.” In that fable “Robin Hoods come with a beautiful promise … They arrive in periods of unrest, when the people are suffering and nothing makes sense anymore.”

One thing is clear: as Mangione’s legal representatives works to have accusations that could lead to the death penalty dismissed, any mention of myths, Robin Hoods, champions or villains will not be admissible as evidence in support for this handsome young man with a “features reminiscent of classical art” soon to be on trial for murder.