Brooklyn DA knows his crime, and his 1st novel is a killer
BY WILLIAM SHERMAN
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Posted Sunday, June 10th 2007, 4:00 AM
Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes
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One cop and two warehouse workers are shot to death in Sunset Park,
Brooklyn, and a young NYPD sergeant with an impeccable reputation
and no obvious motive is charged with the three murders.
Thus begins "Triple Homicide," a thriller written by a man who knows
the territory well, Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes.
"It's based on real events, murders that occurred in 1992 and there
was some discussion then that cops were involved," said Hynes,
Brooklyn's lead prosecutor since 1989. The murders occur against a
backdrop of the police corruption scandals of the time, including
payoffs by drug dealers and mob-linked bookies.
"When I started thinking about writing a novel, first I thought what
would happen if a cop got involved in investigating corruption and
some terrible things happened to him," said Hynes, a lifelong
Brooklyn resident who grew up in Flatbush. "In part, I wrote it as a
lesson for cops: What happens if you are corrupt? And I thought if
it gets published, one day I'll be walking down Court St. and a
young cop would walk up to me and say, 'I read your book and it
scared the hell out of me, so thanks.'"
It took Hynes 15 years from the time he conceived the plot to this
week's publication.
"I always wanted to write a novel, ever since I was a literature
major in college," said Hynes, who has co-written two works of
nonfiction: "Incident at Howard Beach: The Case for Murder" and "The
Regulation of Nursing Homes: A Case Study."
Both works came out of his experiences - prosecuting the 1987
bias-attack murder of Michael Griffith in Howard Beach, Queens, and
going after thieving nursing home owners.
In "Triple Homicide," the twists and turns of the corruption
investigation and the murder trial of the police sergeant are drawn
from Hynes' years as a prosecutor, which began in 1969 when he
became a Brooklyn assistant DA.