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On the fifth of December 2024, a leading publication published the headline “Insurance CEO Shot Dead In Manhattan”. The report then noted 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 chilling and disturbing. But many Americans had a different response: for those who had been denied health insurance or faced exorbitant healthcare costs, the news felt cathartic. 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 created to increase earnings on your health.”

Less than a week after, Luigi Mangione, a handsome, twenty-six-year-old University of Pennsylvania graduate with a graduate degree in computing, was apprehended at a fast-food restaurant in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He faces court proceedings on criminal counts of murder, with the district attorney seeking the capital punishment. So who is Mangione? And what drove the alleged crime? These are the issues John H Richardson seeks to resolve in an investigation that delves into wider topics, too.

Understanding the Person

A journalist for Esquire magazine, 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 extensive reading. We learn that “[when] he was taken into custody, Luigi had a list of 295 books on a reading platform”. Their subject matter covered climate change to masculinity, along with a “emphasis on his own self-improvement, both physical and mental”. 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 present him as 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”. Here, as elsewhere, Richardson attempts to cast his subject in archetypal terms.

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”, “refuse” and “remove”, etched on the bullets left behind at the crime scene. These are the phrases occasionally employed by medical insurers to reject claims. He examines the indication Mangione had a long-term spinal issue, which might have provided motive for an attack, but finds no proof; 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 general belief seems to be that AI is going to eventually either dominate, or destroy us, or both.

Missing Pieces

Notably missing from the book are conversations with the key individuals. Richardson asked, of course, but never expected time with Mangione himself. And his family stated explicitly 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 2021 to 2023, company earnings rose significantly.

Ambiguous Findings

By the conclusion, the reader has no clear understanding of Mangione’s personality or what might have motivated his accused actions. Worse still, Richardson’s obvious sympathy for him gives the reader the uncomfortable impression of having been privy to a subtle approval of an targeted killing. In the book’s closing remarks, Richardson delivers his fairytale assessment: “We’ve entered a time of fables, the insane ruler, the monster in the maze 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 nothing makes sense anymore.”

One thing is certain: as Mangione’s defence team continues in its attempts have charges that could lead to the ultimate sentence thrown out, any mention of myths, folk heroes, heroes or monsters will not be allowed in court in defence of this handsome young man with a “features reminiscent of classical art” facing judgment for murder.