I purchased this book while in Savannah for the first time. I had been promised that the text would capture the spirit of this reclusive and beautiful city. And it did, I have no complaints there. Mr. Brendt weaves this character driven travelogue into the true story of a sensational murder trial that dominated Savannah for nearly a decade. That is a nice device as it allows the author to "character hop" so to speak, while being able to bring the text back to a central incident, the murder trial.
This book is an excellent read if you are interested in the city of Savannah, or are fascinated by the small eccentricities that make every town unique. Mr. Brendt captures both nicely. Although his writing is not spectacular, it is rather mundane and average, his fondness for Savannah and its denizens comes across the page and envelops the reader. You find yourself liking these people despite their oddities, and in some cases, criminal behavior.
My only gripe is that the book has substantial portions that are made up, and chronologically smashed together. This by the author's own admission. I wish he had not done that, as it detracts from the legitimacy of the story, and gives readers the out of thinking that some of the more outrageous aspects of the text were made up. Whether they were or not, I do not know.
The text starts out slow, but builds nicely, and I was never bored. When Mr. Brendt introduces the characters of Joe Odum, and later on, Chablis the text gets a humorous lift. Read the book, and then visit Savannah, you'll see what I mean.

Due to all the hype, I went out of my way to get this book. I needn't have bothered. It didn't impress me. The author admits he mixes fact with fictional embellishments, which is sometimes 'okay', and sometimes not. In this instance, it was more of a 'not'.

If you love Savannah, or Georgia in general, you'd probably enjoy this book as he totally nails the ambience of that city, and its locals. If you're looking for a riveting true crime book, this one may not be very enthralling.

3 Stars = It was 'okay'.

Ova knjiga je jedan od meni najdražih prevoda, i žao mi je što film nije pomogao knjizi... Naime, knjiga obiluje živopisnim likovima, a Klint Istvud je u svom filmu samo načeo te likove, a nijednog nije u potpunosti prikazao... Ono što je posebno interesantno u vezi s ovom knjigom jeste to da je ona potpuno promenila život učmale Savane u Džordžiji... Gradić koji ne voli promene, koji ne voli savremene tekovine, odjednom se našao pod najezdom turista koji su se tu sjatili posle čitanja ove knjige... Bila je veliki hit krajem prošlog veka... :)

3.5 rounded up - I’ve been wanting to read this book for ages as I’ve been beguiled by the book cover ever since it was published in 1994. A selection chosen for October by the ‘On the Southern Literary Trail,’ I finally buckled down to see what the hullabaloo was all about as this novel was on the New York Times bestseller list for 216 weeks. It includes a murder mystery but at its heart seems as much about Savannah and a colorful cast of characters as it does about a murder.

It was evident from the start that wealth played the biggest role in getting on the roster of prominent people in Savannah. Jim Williams decorated Mercer House with antiques, a commodity that performed the double function of bringing him wealth and then serving as a demonstration of it to the community. His annual Christmas party was a hot ticket event; his guest list was compiled with great care as to the who’s in and who’s out invitees. Buying, restoring, and selling houses was also Williams’s stock in trade. Williams was not born in Savannah but in the small Georgia town of Gorden. His rise to prominence broke through the exclusivity of Savannah’s higher echelons.

Another colorful character is Joe Odum, one of the author’s neighbors in Savannah. Joe is a fly-by-night lawyer who plays the piano incessantly and has troops of people wandering in and out of his house. When his funds are insufficient to pay his electric bill, he hooks onto the neighbor's electricity. His financial dealings are a mess. When kicked out of one residence, he takes up living in a home where the owners are out of the country for six months. His girlfriend, Mandy Nichols, was once crowned BBW, Miss Big Beautiful Woman in Las Vegas. Mandy is counting on becoming the next Mrs. Joe Odum.

Another character who could be the subject of a book on her own is Lady Chablis. An African American transgender nightclub star, Berendt first met her as he was parking his $800 1973 Pontiac Grand Prix, a car that Joe Odum had helped him find. Chablis had just come out of Dr. Myra Bishop’s office, where she received hormone shots. She immediately annexes Berendt as her chauffeur.

“How come a white boy like you is drivin’ a old, broken-down, jiveass bruthuh’s heap like this?”

Chablis’s language and mannerisms are hilarious, often lewd. The funniest moment of the entire book occurs toward the end when Chablis tries to attach herself to Berendt as his date to the black debutante ball. The black debutante ball is a very upstanding event, one that’s significant for the young ladies who are invited to attend. Berendt refuses Chablis as his date, but she manages to make an entrance there anyway. What follows is highly entertaining.

When Clint Eastwood directed the film version, Chablis plays herself in the movie.

I was mildly disappointed that the murder didn’t occur until page 169. I’m not usually a blood-thirsty reader but parts of ‘Midnight’ read like the gossip columns and I got a bit bored with who’s who. Things picked up after that but classism continues to be a thread throughout. I enjoyed Chablis and even Joe Odum thumbing their noses at tradition and high society.

One theme that Jim Williams puts into play is the power of magical thinking. He does this through a game he invented called Psycho Dice. As he rolls the dice, Williams sends out strong vibrations for the numbers he calls, thinking that doing so improves his odds. He cools down his young, irascible chauffeur, Danny Hansford by sending out powerful thoughts. He engages the services of voodoo practitioner Minerva, who scrapes up graveyard dirt and touts the recollection of good thoughts thirty minutes before midnight and the utterance of curses for the thirty minutes after midnight as powerful prognosticators. The ending gives persuasive testimony to Minerva’s abilities and makes this a perfect story for Halloween.

There's a 2nd hand book shop in Melton Mowbray (England), which claims to have 10,000 books in store. The owner even professes that, given the space, he could fill his shop three or four times over; it is seriously a readers paradise. So imagine my annoyance during my most recent visit when i couldn't find any of the books on my to-read list (very rarely will i buy a book outside of my to-read list. That's just craziness!). Not wanting to leave this heaven without at least one purchase i starting retracing my eyes along the shelves and spotted Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. I'd considered adding it to my list in the past but for some reason the synopsis had put me off but for £1 and to claim at least one of the shops books i broke my rule and bought it. And oh what a purchase! It's one of those books that's so fascinating you can't put it down. Over the few late nights i read this book i was having to convince/shout at my brain to stay awake. DON'T YOU DARE! JUST ONE MORE PAGE! I very rarely win these battles.

The book is split into two parts. Part 1 can be looked at as a series of short tales of the various eccentric characters the author met during his time in Savannah. This is possibly what originally put me off. I was probably thinking "why do i want to read about lots of unknown people from a city who haven't even killed anyone!". How ignorant my past thoughts were. The people in part 1 are so far out there in terms of bizarreness i would consider their stories some of the most interesting I've read. Some people live a life of weirdness as a charade, probably for attention seeking purposes, but there's no acting or showing off with these people, they're weird to their core. Without foreknowledge of the books contents or Jim Williams himself you might think this is fiction but no, The Lady Chablis and Minerva the Voodoo Priestess really do exist. Absolutely fascinating.

Part 2 focuses on Jim Williams and the circumstances surrounding the murder accusation and court case. The author is embedded in Jim Williams life when these events occur so we almost have a front row seat as the whole saga plays out. Once again, it's almost fictional that the author just happens to be in Savannah and friends with Jim Williams when the murder occurs; it's like it was meant to be. Surprisingly i didn't rate Part 2 as much as Part 1. It was very well written and kept me interested but it just wasn't as intriguing as the eccentrics in Part 1 and because the second half did drag slightly in some places i had to take 1 star off. Overall though a complete must read. Enjoy!

I went back and forth during this entire read. The back was due to the story's direction: it was how the progression that sometimes felt tangential with Southern nuances and regional references. But that was the forth for me as well: Southern and gothic Southern history and social life, literature and movie allusions (Gone With The Wind), cultural inferences (Uga the bulldog mascot of University of Georgia), real-life aspects (US Army and current Hunter Army Airfield) and specifics to the Savannah lifestyle (socialites, St. Patrick's Day, voodoo).

Overall this was a pretty good book that was uniquely written. It was a mix of mystery, crime drama, journalist style, and contemporary fiction. I have not seen the 1997 Clint Eastwood film starring Kevin Spacey and John Cusack so i can't compare the two. But I would recommend it for a good read. Thanks!

This book was worth a read for the sheer entertainment value. It's less of a story and more of a brilliant, hilarious--and mostly true, as I understand it--character study of a collection of Savannah residents between roughly the mid-70's and mid-80s. In it we meet an eccentric lawyer, a glamorous drag queen, a voodoo witch, a dodgy socialite-cum-antique dealer, & many others. At the heart of the book lies the mystery of what really happened to Danny Hansford, a young man with a rough reputation who ends up with a bullet in his chest.

Definitely one of the most unique books I've ever read, and extremely entertaining. I'm not usually much for character studies but I enjoyed this one & I can see why it's become a classic.

I know that this was an enormously popular book, but it just didn't grab me. Probably due to some personal defect, or something that was going on while I was reading it. I know that I will never consider reading it a second time (I don't even have it any more).



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BkC7)Delicious, shimmering prose. Wonderful story. Savannah really should give Mr. Berendt a pension.

Well now, I have to dim my searchlight to a streetlight. Still think it's good but now, well, now I can't see past the one-hit-wonderness to the glories I once took for granted.

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: 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.

It is a spellbinding story peopled by a gallery of remarkable characters: the well-bred society ladies of the Married Woman's Card Club; the turbulent young redneck gigolo; the hapless recluse who owns a bottle of poison so powerful it could kill every man, woman, and child in Savannah; the aging and profane Southern belle who is the "soul of pampered self-absorption"; the uproariously funny black drag queen; the acerbic and arrogant antiques dealer; the sweet-talking, piano-playing con artist; young blacks dancing the minuet at the black debutante ball; and Minerva, the voodoo priestess who works her magic in the graveyard at midnight. These and other Savannahians act as a Greek chorus, with Berendt revealing the alliances, hostilities, and intrigues that thrive in a town where everyone knows everyone else.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is a sublime and seductive reading experience. Brilliantly conceived and masterfully written, this enormously engaging portrait of a most beguiling Southern city has become a modern classic.

My Review: Bored Manhattanite journalist realizes, back in the 1980s, that lunch at a trendy restaurant costs more than air fare to a sexy Southern retreat (those were the days!) and the resulting experience was more lasting. So John Berendt becomes a commuter to Savannah, Georgia, which is the American Bath for sheer physical prettiness, though quite a lot hotter.

Being a good journalist, he meets everyone worth meeting, and being a gay man, meets the entire A list of gay life in this small city in record time. Then he stumbles into an amazing story of murder and skulduggery among the social elite as the elite intersects with gay and gay-for-pay culture.

Along the way he talks to every single interesting person in Savannah and builds a word-picture of its typically Southern hierarchical social scene. As The Lady Chablis, an African-American drag queen made briefly famous by this book, would say, "Flawless!"

Not exactly flawless, but wonderful. Southern characters abound, including the old root woman who introduces Yankee John to the world of the haints and spirits and loa that Southerners, even the Babdiss ones, are aware exists, even when they scream and rail about it as evil, wrong, bad...well, they do that about sex too, and with as much effect.

Cemetery dirt is a powerful ingredient in the sympathetic magic the old root women practice. Where it comes from, that is whose grave it was, matters, as do many other factors, and Yankee John reports with wide-eyed fascination on the entire experience of getting involved in the magical universe to help an accused murderer.

The end of the story is, very sadly, the end of a single book career. The City of Falling Angels notwithstanding, this is Mr. B's one book. Fortunately, it's a very good one. Unfortunately, it's the only one. And so I ding a half-star off for literary incomplete pass. But it's a helluva read!

Audiobook read by Jeff Woodman.

Berendt was a free-lance journalist when curiosity took him to Savannah and he began to write about the particularly insular culture of that Southern city. Then a murder happened, and his story really took off.

I read this sometime in the mid to late 1990s. My F2F book club discussed it in June 1997, and I know I had read it before then. Of course, that pre-dated my keeping track of my reads on Goodreads (or even in my handwritten book journal), and I have no notes of my reactions, but I do remember REALLY liking it. I also remember enjoying the movie (starring Kevin Spacey as millionaire murder suspect Jim Williams).

That being said, on re-reading it I’m not so keen about it. It held my interest, but I realize how long it takes to get to the murder and trial, and I found myself not so interested in the eccentric antics of the Savannah residents. That’s probably because I already knew what was coming and was anxious to get on with it. I’m still giving it 4 stars because I believe that was closer to my original reaction to the book.

Jeff Woodman does an adequate job on the audio. His pacing is good, but his Southern accents sounded really bad to me.


NOTE: Date read is most recent date. I first read this sometime in the mid-1990s.

I'm not sure how to describe this book. I needed to read a true crime story for a reading challenge. This book tells about how the author moved to Savannah, enjoying the city while getting to know some of its colorful people. He comes to know Jim Williams, a rich antique dealer. One night Williams shoots and kills Danny Hansford, a volatile young man who worked for him. Jim claimed self-defense, but the evidence tells something different.

This did not read like a non-fiction book. The author introduces us to various unique individuals who lived in Savannah in the 1980's. There is a man who walks an invisible dog, a con artist who lives in empty mansions while the owner is away, a Voodoo Priestess, and a drag queen. Each person had their own little story told in an amusing fashion. The crime portion of the story doesn't happen until nearly the middle of the book; then the trial, appeal, and re-trials are woven throughout the rest of the story.

I visited Savannah last year and heard some of the stories in this book while touring the historic district and Bonaventure Cemetery. It's a beautiful city and the author does a great job of making you visualize the city with its stunning architecture and parks. I thought the true crime portion of the story was weak, maybe because it was spread out through the second half of the book. I listened to the audiobook narrated by Jeff Woodman whose narration was outstanding. Each character had a different unique voice. Overall, I'd give the book 3.5 Stars on a scale of 1-5; but the narration gets a 10.

Desde que John Berendt publicó Medianoche en el jardín del bien y del mal en 1994 el libro se situó durante años en la lista de best sellers de no ficción del New York Times. Además, el aumento de los visitantes de la ciudad de Savannah (Georgia) fue notable desde ese momento, y no es para menos: en la primera parte de la obra tenemos una crónica social brillante de esa pintoresca ciudad sureña, atractiva por su historia, su arquitectura y sus habitantes, plagada de cotilleos, de pequeñas historias algo inconexas pero interesantes sin duda. En la segunda mitad nos adentramos en el crimen que dio origen al libro y en el posterior juicio, que ya conocía por la brillante película de Eastwood.

Desde luego la obra es difícil de clasificar, como dice la sinopsis, a medio camino entre la novela de viajes, la crónica social, el trabajo periodístico e incluso el thriller (aunque a quien vaya buscando esto último le digo desde ya que este no es su libro). Y esta mezcla es quizás lo que menos me ha gustado, aunque como narrador no haya nada que criticarle a Berendt, quizás le pesa demasiado su faceta periodística, y le cuesta un poco dar vida a la historia. Me ha costado un poco introducirme en ella al lado de los personajes, brillantemente presentados y descritos, por los que me he interesado y he buscado información, pero a los que no he visto cobrar vida (la mejor, sin duda, Lady Chablis, quien se interpretó a sí misma en la película).