I enjoyed this book a lot. The characters were fascinating and with the mystery it kept me interested. Loved the narrative about Savannah and as others have said, it makes me want to visit there. ( )

Not something I would recommend. Tries too hard to be original. ( )

Quite the Southern story of odd people as is in every town and the murder trial with Jim Williams.
Without giving anything away, this is so much better than the movie but do see the movie after the book. We toured Savannah and Mercer House after the book and it was so easily invisioned. should you be able to get the audio, it is delightful with the voice changes. ( )

A cut above your usual true crime book. it paints such a colourful picture of Savannah that you can't help wanting to visit it one day. ( )

One of my favorite books. I wish I was there experiencing it myself! ( )

I enjoyed reading this book but it was hard to stay motivated. It seem to drag on a bit. I did buy this in Savannah and saw some of the locations in the book wich made reading it fun. The characters are so life like and Berendt writes them vividly. Overall is a good read. ( )

This book felt like a series of vignettes about eccentrc Savannah characters. I felt it did not contain enough "story" for me. But it does make me want to see the movie. ( )

This is a piece of fiction wrapped around a single true event. Be that as it may, it is well written and entertaining ( )

This book is just so good. It's funny, full of memorable characters, and completely true. That last actually makes it even more compelling. In short, it's about the author's adventures in Savannah, Georgia, in the 1980s and all the quirky people he meets. It's also about the murder trial(s) of Jim Williams, a wealthy antiques dealer whose annual Christmas party is the height of the social scene. I was drawn in from the very first, and now I desperately want to visit Savannah and see its storied beauty. ( )

Great book...unbelievable eccentrics...UGA - the bulldog - ...murder & mayhem...all true! ( )

Savannah, Georgia, a small southern city known for its history and its hospitality, is both the setting and the subject for John Berendt’s 1994 book, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. The opening chapters of the book focuses on some of the more unusual citizens of Savannah. There’s Jim Williams, the weathly antiques dealer who once harassed a film crew working outside his house by hanging a Nazi flag so that it appeared in all their shots; Luther Driggers, an inventor who’s reputed to possess a vial of poison that’s so lethal it could kill the whole city if poured into the water supply; Joe Odum, a tour guide and entertainer who opens his rented home to all comers, zoning laws be damned; and the Lady Chablis, a drag queen who is all woman. Berendt’s descriptions of these people are just wonderful. He lets them do most of the talking and doesn’t ever seem to make fun of them or judge them.

At about the halfway point, the book shifts gears as Jim Williams is arrested for murdering his lover, Danny Hansford. This section of the book took me longer to warm up to because I was enjoyed the travelogue so much and wasn’t really interested in listening to a true crime book. However, as the trial—trials, actually—went on, I became engrossed in that part of the story as well. I wanted to hear other characters weigh in on the case, and I was interested in how Williams’s wealth and his sexuality affected the outcome, not to mention whether the voodoo priestess that he hired could work effective magic on his behalf.

The audiobook is well done. The reader, Jeff Woodman, handles the different voices very well, which is important in a book in which the subjects do most of their own talking. The book does feature a short talk from Berendt himself about the writing of the book. In this section, I learned that his account of his own activities wasn’t in fact accurate. I can understand why he reframed the story as he did, but it was still a disappointment to find that he had tweaked the time line so much.

That said, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is still a worthwhile read. If I’m not in fact the last person to read this, you might consider trying it out yourself. I’m sorry I waited so long.

See my complete review at my blog. ( )

After I finished this I noticed it was classified as non-fiction. I would have rated this book 5 stars as a fictional read since it is wildly entertaining with an endearing cast of characters. However classifying a book as non-fiction brings all kinds of questions of authenticity and accuracy into consideration that a fictional book just doesn't have, and that's just where this book falls short. ( )

Certainly deserves 5 stars for being a compelling read, but when you see how he re-sequenced everything to make it more dramatic and to increase his own part in the story, it is more than a little disheartening. If only we could do that with our own lives.... ( )

I approached this book, which Edmund White calls a 'non-fiction novel', with some caution because of its great popularity: I'm generally very suspicious of books that are popular. However, I was very pleasantly surprised, and also surprised that it has in fact proved so popular, as Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is hardly a conventional novel. It's a love affair John Berendt had with Savannah, Georgia, and which brought a stream of tourists into the city in search of the human and architectural sights mentioned, such as Bonaventure Cemetery (where the poet Conrad Aiken's bench grave stands), or perhaps a sighting of Savannah's larger-than-life characters, like 'female impersonator' The Lady Chablis, or hope for an invitaton to a party such as the ones thrown by Joe Odom, the highly likeable con merchant. These and a number of other characters move around the main story, which is the murder of the priapic Danny Hansford by his employer and occasional lover, the antique furniture dealer Jim Williams, who lived in the impressive Mercer House, the former home of songwriter Johnny Mercer. The novel is funny and fast-moving, but there is a structural problem: it is too episodic, and although the murder and subsequent trials are the central issue, the colourful characters who flit in and out of it somehow don't merge too well with this central focus.

http://tonyshaw3.blogspot.com/

Shots rang out in Savannah's grandest mansion in the misty, early morning hours of May 2, 1981. Was it murder or self-defense? For nearly a decade, the shooting and its aftermath reverberated throughout this hauntingly beautiful city of moss-hung oaks and shaded squares. John Berendt's sharply observed, suspenseful, and witty narrative reads like a thoroughly engrossing novel, and yet it is a work of nonfiction. Berendt skillfully interweaves a hugely entertaining first-person account of life in this isolated remnant of the Old South with the unpredictable twists and turns of a landmark murder case.

Great book, great city. I lived there for years, and this book describes the town to a T. Visit the book and then visit the city!

When I picked up this novel I thought I was picking up a hoodoo-flavoured mystery novel. Midnight in the Garden of good and evil is this, and it's also much more. The book consists of two parts, where the first reads as a travelogue, describing the author's semi-move to the town of Savannah, Georgia and various encounters with local eccentrics and characters. The second part details the investigation of- and subsequent courtroom battles concerning a scandalous upper class murder. The book is highly episodic, using different incidents and events in his description of savannah as well as the account of the crime investigation and court proceedings. This leaves me with the impression that this probably shouldn't be considered a definite account of the murder of Danny Hansford (uhm, spoiler I guess?), but rather a book trying to explain the particular circumstances an environment that, in a way, produced the crime.

The author doesn't stay to long with the actual details of the murder either, instead describing its effect on upper-class society, and indeed the city of Savannah in general. This way, the crime becomes the backdrop to his account of a fascinating part of the American south, rather than the other way around, and for me at least this works swimmingly well. As an account of a crime, this book might have been rather bland and unremarkable if it wasn't for its loving and deeply atmospheric descriptions of Savannah and it's inhabitants. As a reader, one cant help but long to see this city of with it's old mansions and lichen-covered oak trees that the author describes in such lovingly detail without allowing himself to let the pace drop or getting stuck in irrelevant details.

For all it's descriptions of violence and social plotting and pettiness, the book is clearly a love letter to Savannah, and that's fine by me.

(First draft - might be revised) ( )

Initially I thought that his book would not interest me that much. A true crime story with plenty of quirky southern characters didn't sound like my type of thing but I was pleasantly surprised and found myself unable to put this book down. The crime aspect is handled very well so a reader who is not a crimbuff will find it interesting, not boring or technical. ( )

Loved this for the picture Berendt created of Savannah - beautifyully atmospheric. ( )

Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil is based on the murder trial of Jim Williams, a successful dealer in antiques and a restorer of the old houses in historic Savannah. Williams is accused of murdering his live-in employee Danny Hansford ( known to be a street hustler and possible lover to Williams ).

This true crime mystery is at the center of the book but surrounding it is a motley crew of very quirky colorful characters ( at times it's almost hard to believe that these people do/did exist).

Labeled as non-fiction Berendt has admitted to taking "certain storytelling liberties" but the characters are real according to him. If you are looking for a book that is all about a true crime story, this is not it. If you want to immerse yourself in some very flamboyant peoples lives with a little bit of the true crime story mixed in pick this up and enjoy. ( )

Murder, gullah, drag queens--oh my! (These are a few of my favorite things . . .) There's probably not much I can say about this book that hasn't already been said, but that won't stop me. I saw the movie when it first came out and loved it, but just never got around to reading the book. I thought that the entire book would be about the murder trial of Jim Williams, the prominent Savannah antiques dealer accused of murdering Danny Hansford (with whom it was rumored he was having a sexual relationship). While a generous portion of the book is dedicated to the details of Williams' four trials, the book is much more than that. This is a collection of stories about the people and history of Savannah--some of it true, some of it embellished, and some of it flat-out fabricated. The characters are eccentric, but likable (particularly The Lady Chablis--the foul mouthed drag queen who has labeled herself "The Grand Empress of Savannah." She's by far my favorite character of the novel, followed by Minerva, the fascinating practitioner of voodoo). And, while I knew he was probably a scoundrel, I also liked Jim Williams, who insisted on continuing to live in Savannah because "it pisses off all the right people."

There was a lot of discussion at book club as to whether this should be classified as fiction or non-fiction. Here's my verdict: who cares? If the story is entertaining and well told, whether or not it's 100% factual shouldn't make a whit of difference to anyone who is looking to be entertained.

It should also be said that the cover art for the book is perfect. The bird girl of Bonaventure Cemetery stands there like Savannah itself, prim and old-fashioned, holding out both good and evil--head cocked in curiosity to see from which bowl her citizens will take. ( )

This story is more about quirky people than a murder mystery. The characters are quite colorful and often hilarious. The mystery was not too compelling and wrapped up a little too neat and tidy. To me this was a character based book. ( )

As I read this book I was reminded of "Seinfeld" a show in which the characters are terribly engaging despite the fact that they're utterly unlikeable. Berendt has an eye for the weakness of the flesh, but he reports on it, not judgementally, but with good humor. The people who populate the book, from the murdered boy to the man who killed him, from the feckless party boy to the black drag queen, are all beautifully written. If they end up looking less than savory, it's their own doing - out of their own mouths they are condemned - Berendt just reports the facts as he saw or heard them. I don't think that this story is as much about Savannah, or even about the South as it is about how people in any fairly inbred socity can become odd or eccentric. This is the sort of story that could take place anywhere; the grace notes are typically Southern, but the passions involved are universal, and that's what makes this such a compelling book. I recommend it highly ( )

I loved this book and read it in almost one sitting several years before the movie was released. Laugh-out-loud funny in places. The Southern eccentric is almost a clichéd character, but this book breathes new life into the tired stereotype. Read it. It's so much fun! ( )