Edwin Torres and the Source Novels Carlito's Way

Torres was a criminal defense lawyer and Supreme Court justice who wrote about the world he adjudicated

Edwin Torres was born in 1931 in East Harlem to parents from Jayuya, Puerto Rico. A mathematics teacher named Mr. Arenson steered him to Stuyvesant High School, which Torres credits as transformative. He graduated from City College and Brooklyn Law School, was admitted to the New York State Bar in 1958, and participated in the prosecution of Sal "the Capeman" Agron as an assistant district attorney in 1959. He then became a criminal defense lawyer before his appointment to the New York State Criminal Court in 1977 and election to the State Supreme Court in 1980, where he presided over murder cases in the Twelfth Judicial District until retiring in 2008 at age seventy-eight. (crimereads, wikipedia)

He began writing after seeing Across 110th Street and realizing nobody was telling these stories accurately

Torres started writing fiction after watching the 1972 blaxploitation film Across 110th Street. His wife encouraged him to write about crime from the inside. He composed his first novel in longhand each evening while practicing law, drawing on decades of firsthand contact with the criminal world of Spanish Harlem. Torres described his method as fusion rather than autobiography:

"A composite or fusion of reality and imagination" with "a factual underpinning." — Edwin Torres, CrimeReads (2019)

Carlito's Way (1975) was a first-person coming-of-age crime narrative written in Spanglish

The first novel follows Carlos Brigante from childhood through his rise as a heroin kingpin in Spanish Harlem. Torres wrote it in Carlito's voice, mixing English and Spanish in the kind of bilingual register that no mainstream crime novel had attempted. The New Yorker compared it favorably to George V. Higgins's The Friends of Eddie Coyle. Author Richard Price called the work an unvarnished portrait:

"His books are a brass knuckle to the groin. There isn't a false note on any page." — Richard Price, CrimeReads (2019)

After Hours (1979) follows Carlito's doomed attempt to go straight

The sequel, which the 1993 film adapts, picks up after Carlito's release from prison and tracks his effort to leave the criminal world behind. The novel's plot parallels the film closely: Carlito's loyalty to a corrupt lawyer, his romance, his dream of escape, and his murder at the moment of departure. Torres wrote the sequel as noir, letting Carlito narrate from beyond the grave, which David Koepp preserved in the film's circular structure. The title was changed for the film to avoid confusion with Martin Scorsese's 1985 After Hours. (crimereads, wikipedia)

Torres sold the film rights ten times before the project finally reached production

The novels attracted a parade of producers and directors who optioned the rights and let them lapse. British producer Barry Hanson took the first option in 1981. Abel Ferrara was attached at one point. Torres joked about the revolving door of buyers. When Al Pacino finally encountered Torres at a YMCA gym in 1973 while training for Serpico and read the first novel in galley form, the character lodged in his memory for twenty years. Pacino eventually brought the project to producer Martin Bregman, who commissioned David Koepp's screenplay and spent two years developing it. (mentalfloss, crimereads)

Torres convinced Pacino to drop the ponytail and kept the production grounded in East Harlem reality

Torres served as a consultant on the film, bringing Pacino to East Harlem to absorb local atmosphere. When Pacino showed up with a ponytail, Torres took him to the neighborhood, where a local gangster remarked that Pacino would be wearing ballerina slippers next. The ponytail was dropped. Torres's presence on set ensured that details of the barrio, the criminal argot, and the social dynamics carried the authority of someone who had both defended and sentenced the men the film portrays. (crimereads)

Torres also wrote Q&A, which De Palma's colleague Sidney Lumet adapted in 1990

Torres's second novel, Q&A (1977), was adapted by Sidney Lumet as a 1990 film starring Nick Nolte as a corrupt Irish detective. Torres's insider perspective on New York's criminal justice system gave both adaptations a texture that purely fictional crime narratives rarely achieve: the procedural details come from someone who processed hundreds of cases through the system. (crimereads)

Torres is credited as the grandfather of Latinx crime fiction in the United States

Literary historians credit Torres with creating the template for Puerto Rican crime fiction. Author Richie Narvaez has argued that without Torres, works like Ernesto Quinonez's Bodega Dreams might not have emerged. No major Puerto Rican character led a genre novel again until Abraham Rodriguez's Spidertown in 1994, a nineteen-year gap from Torres's debut. Torres stopped writing when he became a judge, saying he no longer had the bug. His books are currently out of print. (crimereads)