Given my conservative frame of mind, fiction that bucks today’s politically correct dogma attracts me like Paris Hilton to the paparazzi’s flash. So when David Forsmark provides a short list of “Politically Incorrect Fiction” I am incapable of not clicking the link. What I found forced me to ask myself, ‘Am I putting politics above a good story?’ Forsmark’s list includes novels by Joseph Wambaugh, Alex Berenson, Robert Crais, Steve Hamilton, Michael Crichton, and Steven Hunter. The inclusion of Hunter’s I, Sniper is what made me question my motives when it comes to what fiction I choose to read. Consider this excerpt from I, Sniper, included in Forsmark’s list: “The narrative is the set of assumptions the press believes in, possibly without even knowing that it believes in them. It’s so powerful because it’s unconscious. It’s not like they get together every morning and decide ‘these are the lies we tell today.’ No, that would be too crude and honest. Rather, it’s a set of casual non-rigorous assumptions about a reality they’ve never really experienced that’s arranged in such a way as to reinforce their best and most ideal presumptions about themselves and their importance to the system and the

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