Most of the stories written by Canadian businessmen and politican William Alexander Fraser are imitations of the Boy's Own style popular in Britain before World War I. Caste is a remarkable exception, a densely populated, closely plotted adventure of attempted mutiny and covert response in India under British rule. Altogether sympathetic to imperial concerns, it nonetheless shows Indian subjects with a wide range of motives and outlooks, and hands its British hero something more complicated than pure success on all fronts.