RASPUTIN: THE SAINT WHO SINNED

Ah, the ever-popular Rasputin! The randy "Mad Monk"-mystic, healer, hypnotist, seducer, charlatan, Czarina Alexandra's evil genius whose mummified phallus is kept as a holy relic somewhere in Southern California. (Where else?) My role model! Russofile Moynihan's thick biography, a kind of Russian Horatio Alger epic for nogoodniks, stints on none of the juicy details of the Siberian peasant-savant's rise to international infamy. Nelson Runger gives a nice reading. His voice has the flavor of a documentary narrator, with Lowell Thomas notes. His energy never flags, though the sound quality sometimes does. Y.R. ©AudioFile, Portland, Maine [Published: DEC/JAN 99]