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On December 5, 2024, a major newspaper ran the front-page story “Insurance CEO Gunned Down In Manhattan”. The article 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 truly cold and shocking. But numerous US citizens reacted differently: for those who faced insurance rejections or struggled with medical bills, the news felt cathartic. Online platforms erupted. One post stated: “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 handsome, twenty-six-year-old University of Pennsylvania graduate with a master’s in computer science, was arrested at a fast-food restaurant in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He faces court proceedings on federal and state charges of murder, with prosecutors seeking the death penalty. So who is Mangione? And what drove the accused offense? These are the questions John H Richardson seeks to resolve in an inquiry 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 exist in the hidden parts of the internet, writing stories about people “cursed with realistic fears about an end-times scenario”. To reveal “the making” of his subject, Richardson first reviews Mangione’s extensive reading. We learn that “[when] he was arrested, Luigi had a list of nearly three hundred titles on a reading platform”. Their content covered climate change to masculinity, along with a “emphasis on his own self-improvement, both body and mind”. Additionally, Richardson sifts through his communications with online personalities 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 tries to justify this by suggesting that “Luigi’s mystery, 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 profoundly worried 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”, “deny” and “depose”, etched on the bullets left behind at the crime scene. These are the terms sometimes used by medical insurers to reject claims. He examines the evidence Mangione had a chronic back condition, which might have provided motive for an attack, but discovers no confirmation; instead, what significance there is seems to lie in Mangione’s existential anxiety about the world around him, one where “everything is accelerating whether we like it or not, moving rapidly to the edge”; a world where the consensus seems to be that AI is going to ultimately either dominate, or destroy us, or both.

Gaps in the Narrative

Notably missing from the book are conversations with the key individuals. Richardson made requests, but never expected time with Mangione himself. And his family made it clear that they had chosen not to talk 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, company earnings increased by 33%.

Unclear Conclusions

By book’s end, the audience has no clear understanding of Mangione’s personality or what could have driven his alleged crimes. More troubling, Richardson’s obvious sympathy for him creates the disturbing feeling of having been exposed to a veiled endorsement of an assassination. In the book’s final lines, Richardson delivers his mythical interpretation: “We’ve entered a era of stories, 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 population is in pain and nothing makes sense anymore.”

One thing is certain: as Mangione’s defence team works to have accusations that could lead to the ultimate sentence dismissed, any reference of fables, folk heroes, champions or monsters will not be admissible as evidence in support for this attractive individual with a “features reminiscent of classical art” soon to be on trial for murder.