The author Nicholas Delbanco, professor of English and director of the Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program, as well as the Hopwood Awards Program, has tackled a topical subject in an atypical way in his forthcoming novel, In the Name of Mercy.

Using the form of the mystery novel, Delbanco examines the complex and controversial public and private issues associated with incurable illnesses, costly health care, the individual's experience of dying, the survivors' feelings of grief and/or guilt, and the practice of professional versus lay "mercy killing.

In one of several enthusiastic pre-publication reviews by other authors, Antonya Nelson wrote, "While you're busy trying to figure out who killed whom, and why, the author has quietly, elegantly, chillingly subverted your most basic assumptions about virtue and villainy." And Thomas Flanagan found the novel "genuinely moving in places, darkly and savagely funny in places-sometimes the same places."

Delbanco discussed his novel, scheduled for publication this September by Warner Books, with Michigan Today's, John Woodford.

Michigan Today: How did you decide to write a medical thriller?
Nicholas Delbanco: My other novels are, to a degree, inward-facing texts. I mean by this that they were, almost without exception, private books--books about the individual or a group of individuals and not the commonweal. But I thought it was time to look outward, to address a public issue this time through. I wanted to write about something that most Americans would confront--and wound up, in effect, with something that everyone will. My subject's as certain as taxes: death.

As I was thinking about what the book might consist of, it felt like tumblers in a lock clicking in--a combination clicking in. Here we are in the home state of Dr.Jack Kevorkian, who has helped bring the issues of medical ethics and euthanasia out of the shadows and into the spotlight. Also, my elder brother Thomas is a doctor at Harvard's Beth Israel Hospital, and here was a chance to collaborate with him.

MT: Is the book about Kevorkian?
ND: Not at all. It's about the problems he poses, the issues he represents. Some of my characters say harsh things about him, but they are expressing their opinions. I've never met him. The book asks the reader to consider the fine line between euthanasia and murder. Where can one draw that line? Where is the act merciful and when is it unjustified slaughter?

MT: You've published 15 books before, 12 volumes of fiction--but this is the first one set in the state of Michigan, isn't it?
ND: Yes. And it was an added pleasure to learn more about the state. It's also the first time I've had a contract for a work of fiction before writing a single word-though in the case of my three books of nonfiction that was routinely the case. But while I was considering the prospect of this particular idea, it so happened that Larry Kirshbaum was on campus as a member of the LS&A Visiting Committee. He's the president and CEO of Warner Books, and I asked him to the Hopwood Room to speak to my graduate students about the world of publishing--his experience thereof and their possible career paths in the field. He did so; he's been generosity itself.

Well, anyway, as Larry was leaving, I somewhat impulsively asked, "How'd you like to do a book about mercy killing?" and he said, "Done." It was as simple as that. My brother 'Tom was passing through Ann Arbor at about the same time, and we spent a day talking about issues the novel might raise, the plot-lines, the characters, how we might collaborate so that the medical material would be precise. Since I hadn't yet written a word and had never written this sort of novel, I had night sweats more than once-but the fact of a signed contract did keep me to the mark.'

MT: What sort of help did your brother provide?
ND: The book is full medical detail, from issues of hospital costs to matters like the way an insulin pump functions or how might someone dilute a patient's blood when it should be thickened instead- what pharmaceuticals might endanger a patient with a certain condition, what grand rounds would sound like, et cetera. We used to play chess together, and it was fine fun to match wits with each other again, to try out gambits and construct plot-traps.

MT: The book is intended for the mass market. Does that mean you scaled down your usual inventiveness?
ND: I don't think so; not at all. The story explores the idea of evil by contagion-and it does so (or at least I hope it does so) by very carefully setting forth a series of oppositions in character and action. The plot is mirror-built; I constructed, I mean, with a classic doppelganger, or doubling, form--with victims and potential killers poised as shadow-selves. You get two for the price of one.

What's most experimental--and risky--about the structure is something it took quite a while for me to understand. Almost all murder mysteries or thrillers have someone who emerges as the main character--at least have someone who tries to solve the crime. Whether its Miss Marple or a professional gumshoe or a reporter or framed victim or even an innocent bystander, someone tries to make conscious sense of what is going on. And the reader follows along. But my mystery doesn't work quite that way. I have a bunch of characters moving around the board like chess pieces; I get into their heads, from pawns to kings and queens, and in effect manipulate them from above. Each has his or her own story, but no one character walks you through the game.

The novel starts with a protagonist, Dr. Peter Julius, and we stay over-his-shoulder for much of the early going. But then he moves into a hospital in the fictive town of Bellehave, Michigan, and the narrative unfolds by means of different voices.

A hospital's a busy place, full of professional people with separate and sometimes conflicting agendas. It's full of course of patients, also, and their families-each of whom has a story that may be noble, shameful, joyous, sorrowful. And yet in a sense everyone in a hospital is trying to move in the same direction-towards a cure, towards health. But hospitals and the adjacent hospice are conflict-sites as well.