A Cousin’s Conspiracy

Horatio Alger Jr. wrote A Cousin’s Conspiracy late in his career, and it has all the comfortable Alger ingredients. A young man, an inheritance, a scheming relative who tries to take what isn’t his, and a slow vindication arrived at through honest work and lucky chance.

The protagonist is the kind of polite, hardworking, unflashy boy Alger always wrote. The cousin is the schemer. The reader knows from the first chapter how it has to end. The pleasure, if you find pleasure in Alger, is in the path.

The writing is plain, the dialogue is mannered to a modern ear, and the moral framing is on the surface rather than buried.

For scholars of Gilded Age popular fiction or readers who already enjoy Alger’s other books, this fits the catalog. As an introduction to him, Ragged Dick is still the better starting point.