“There’s no f!#%&n’ way you’ll ever do anything about cop corruption, or for that matter judge corruption! It’s an institution!” — “Morty,” Triple Homicide, p. 13.

Given the above passage from his new novel, Triple Homicide, a casual reader could be forgiven for assuming that Charles “Joe” Hynes, the long-serving Brooklyn District Attorney, doesn’t think too highly of judges.

But it was largely due to the help of New York Supreme Court Justice Edwin Torres, who penned the bestselling gangster tome Carlito’s Way, that Hynes’s book was published at all. Hynes had spent 16 years trying to get his tale of police corruption to the masses, but it took an introduction to Howard Kaminsky, a former Random House executive and friend of Torres, to finally make the D.A. a published novelist.

Fittingly, Hynes dedicated the book to Torres — which was news (albeit good news) to the judge.

“That’s very decent of him,” said Torres, when told about the dedication. “I’m flattered beyond words that Joe should do that.”

Torres continued. “But I only helped indirectly. It’s the quality of the book, as far as I’m concerned. I think it’s a terrific book, and I think it’d make a terrific film — that’s the ultimate thing.”

Although his days as both prosecutor and judge have been largely spent in Manhattan, Torres got a good dose of Hynes’s borough by attending Brooklyn School of Law. He’s also no pushover for the likes of Hynes's quarry, having earned the moniker “the time machine” for his long sentences.

Beyond that, the judge was certainly offering a successful model for Hynes. Torres’s own novel became a box office magnet.

Hynes spokesman Morty Matz confirmed that, “the movie deal is out there, and there have been discussion[s] with film people.”

Little wonder. Triple Homicide is a tightly written (if slightly stiff and formulaic) tale of corruption rampant in New York’s criminal justice system during the 1970’s and 1990’s.

However deeply the book was informed by reality, the author was every bit the lawyer in describing his work. He noted that though “the overall connection to this reality was two major investigations, those of the 13th plainclothes and the 77th precinct in Brooklyn . . . all characters are fictional.”

Matz reiterated the point.

“It is not actual and factual or biographical,” he said. “Morty is in the book in the beginning. That is my name — but I never told him the story. Like [E. L.] Doctrow fiction, he puts it in a setting that he knows from experience and sprinkles it with characters that he knows.”

Fair enough. But the events are clearly based upon fact, which becomes an issue for the reader; it is often difficult to discern where the nonfiction ends and the fiction begins.

Hynes admits that he based his novel on the case of New York Police Department patrolman Michael Dowd, who ran a large-scale drug trafficking ring while in uniform — amidst the knowledge of his coworkers on the force. Many characters are thinly veiled New York figures: Hynes said that “Police Commissioner Keating” is based on Raymond Kelly, “Mayor Richardson” on Rudolph Giuliani, and “Officer Kurland” on Dowd. (Though unconfirmed, other characters bear close resemblance to NYPD whistleblowers Frank Serpico and Joseph Tromboli.)

The unnamed narrator, a special prosecutor, also clearly parallels Hynes’s own experience in that capacity in the late 1970’s, as an assistant districty attorney and again a decade later as head of the state special prosecutor’s office. But whereas the fictional prosecutor enjoys an unsullied courtroom victory, Hynes at the time faced harsh criticism from some quarters for allegedly focusing on his upcoming run for D.A., rather than pushing his staff to investigate Tromboli’s allegations regarding Dowd’s drug deals.

Based on what Hynes describes as “a very, very dark period of time for the NYPD,” Triple Homicide features the murderous double-dealings of the Brooklyn justice system — a potentially touchy subject for a man whose livelihood depends on reelection and friendly relationships with other Kings County pols. Fittingly, Hynes, ever the politician, quickly noted that after Commissioner Kelly’s overhaul of the NYPD (and notably, his redesign of the Internal Affairs apparatus), “the Police Department today is different — the Police Department of then no longer exists. I don’t believe we’re going to see systemic corruption, as we did then, today.”

“When I decided to write about it, fictionalized,” Hynes said, “I [wanted] young police officers to read it and be  frightened. It’s one thing to face the humiliation of arrest, but in prison, for murder — that’s quite another thing to read.”

Torres, for one, thinks the book serves that purpose.

“This should serve as a kind of primer about the pitfalls and the dangers of being a young police officer in today’s society,” he said. “Any officer that reads it is going to learn a lot.”

Hynes’s insistence on the fictional nature of his book — and his assertion that the Brooklyn of 2007 is far better than that depicted in Triple Homicide — suggests that he is aware of political risk with this publication.

In 2001, Hynes demoted one of his assistant prosecutors, Robert C. Reuland, for a comment he made while promoting his own novel, Hollowpoint. (Reuland said Brooklyn was the best place to work as a prosecutor because the borough had “more dead bodies per square inch than anyplace else.”)

After his demotion and subsequent resignation, Reuland sued Hynes for violating his right to free speech. The former prosecutor was awarded $30,000 in 2004, plus attorney’s fees, a decision upheld in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit last year.

Asked about the prosecutor-as-novelist dynamic, Hynes told the New York Sun that his situation differed from Reuland’s because his assistant had been “using his position to sell his book.”

Reuland, for one, failed to see the distinction.

“What did I do that he’s not doing?” Reuland said. “He’s doing readings here, there, and everywhere. The only difference is that in my case that argument was put to a federal jury, and a federal jury rejected it. Is he saying the jury’s wrong?” asked Reuland. “He alleged that I was using my position to sell the book, which was not true.”

It is undeniable that Hynes’s position is a huge selling point for the book. On the cover of the novel, as well as on Amazon.com and other booksellers’ sites, Hynes is listed as the “legendary Brooklyn district attorney,” though he insisted, “Only [New York mystery writer] Nelson DeMille uses ‘legendary!’ ” Further, the Library Journal says, “Hynes's experience as a D.A. lends instant credibility and an insider voice that few authors are able to attain."

Notwithstanding all of those citations, Hynes maintains that his situation is entirely different from that of his former employee.

“Reuland lied about the state of homicide in Brooklyn, flat out lied,” he said. “The Second Circuit affirmed the decision of the trial jury, but the dissent opinion — the stinging dissent opinion — was that someone shouldn’t profit from lying to promote a book.”

Hynes petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court for review and said in late September that he was “hopeful” the decision would finally go his way. But Reuland’s attorney, Jane Bilus Gould of Lovett & Gould in White Plains, said that “cert was denied” October 1.

Reuland, who continues to write, is now on the other side of the courtroom, working as an attorney for the indigent in Kings County. He said that he is “just glad that this unpleasantness is finished.”

And, he added with a laugh, he has no plans to write a novel based on a fictionalized Hynes. “He’s just not that interesting of a character.”

One other facet of the novel bears special note: One character mentions justices turning a blind eye when faced with colleagues’ improprieties. Fact or fiction?

“The character who said judges were letting judges off the hook was fictional,” Hynes insisted. “At least there’s a requirement, the discretionary rule, so there’s an incentive to report it.”

The D.A. concluded somewhat cryptically. “But do judges line up to report misdeeds of their brothers and sisters? Not more than anyone else does.”