Fiction is so powerful, whether for good or ill. Think of Harriet Beecher Stowe and her incendiary Uncle Tom’s Cabin or John Steinbeck’s socialist novels excusing Americans’ clamor for handouts. So I’m always happy when someone on our side evens the score. Behold, then, Daniel Forbes’ Derail This Train Wreck: 

Not too far in our dystopian future, Mitchell Fremson finds himself an island of sanity battling a police state gone haywire. Armed only with courage, and principle, and one of the wryest wits to emerge on the literary scene in decades, Fremson leads us on a rollicking and riveting ride at once horrifying and all too plausible.

Mr. Forbes says that “an NYPD assault and his successful free-speech lawsuit against Lincoln Center and the cops” “sparked” the novel — and indeed, Derail begins with a cop’s attack on a citizen. I think you’ll cheer as I did at the scene’s outcome…

The Best of Becky Akers