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On December 5, 2024, a major newspaper ran the headline “Insurance CEO Shot Dead In Manhattan”. The report then noted 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 chilling and disturbing. But many Americans reacted differently: for those who faced insurance rejections or struggled with medical bills, the news felt like a release. Social media blew up. One comment stated: “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 maximize profits on your health.”

Five days later, Luigi Mangione, a good-looking, 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 criminal counts of murder, with prosecutors seeking the capital punishment. So who is Mangione? And what might have motivated the alleged crime? These are the issues John H Richardson seeks to resolve in an investigation that delves into wider topics, too.

The Making of a Subject

A writer for a major publication, Richardson spent years researching the groups that lurk in the dark corners 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 taken into custody, Luigi had a list of 295 books on Goodreads”. Their subject matter ranged from climate change to masculinity, along with a “focus on his own self-improvement, both physical and mental”. Furthermore, Richardson analyzes his communications with influencers and authors as well as his many posts on social media. These original materials, intended to depict a picture of Mangione, instead present him as an unclear character. 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’

Interpreting the Incident

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 phrases occasionally employed by medical insurers to deny coverage. He looks at the evidence Mangione suffered from a chronic back condition, which could have been a reason for an attack, but discovers no confirmation; instead, what significance there is seems to rest in Mangione’s existential anxiety 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.

Missing Pieces

Notably missing from the book are conversations with the key individuals. Richardson made requests, but never expected time with 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 leadership, from 2021 to 2023, company earnings increased by 33%.

Ambiguous Findings

By the conclusion, the reader has no clear understanding of Mangione’s personality or what might have motivated his alleged crimes. More troubling, Richardson’s apparent empathy for him gives the reader the disturbing feeling of having been exposed to a veiled endorsement of an targeted killing. In the book’s final lines, Richardson presents his mythical interpretation: “We’ve entered a time of fables, the mad king, the beast in the labyrinth and the emperor without clothes.” In that fable “Robin Hoods come with a beautiful promise … They arrive in periods of unrest, when the people are suffering and everything is confusing anymore.”

One thing is certain: as Mangione’s defence team works to have accusations that could lead to the ultimate sentence dismissed, any mention of myths, Robin Hoods, heroes or villains will not be allowed in court in support for this handsome young man with a “features reminiscent of classical art” soon to be on trial for murder.