SIN KILLER

This offbeat Western from the author of LONESOME DOVE follows the aristocratic Berrybender family on a dangerous trip up the Missouri River in 1830 to hunt buffalo. Members of the party face Indian attacks, frostbite and natural calamity, but the central story concerns daughter Tasmin's fast romance and marriage to preacher and Indian fighter Jim Snow, the title's "Sin Killer." Alfred Molina reads the bawdy, sometimes bloody, story with a zest that conveys both drama and human comedy. A passage about a servant's emergence from his cold-weather shelter inside a dying buffalo is both funny and fascinating. Some of his voices, particularly that of the stubborn Lord Berrybender, seem caricatured, but all are distinctive. J.A.S. (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine [Published: DEC 02/ JAN 03]