The perfect mix of character study and courtroom drama, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil paints a fascinating picture of Savannah, Georgia. It's a moody, atmospheric novel that draws you in with its exquisite descriptions and eccentric cast. There are aristocratic snobs and drag queens, punk rock teens and possibly murderous millionaires. It all sounds a bit too good to be true--based on a series of real events from the 1980's-- and maybe it is. But nonetheless, it's wildly entertaining and compulsively readable. I'd recommend the audiobook because there are a few slow moments that I might not have been motivated to read had I been reading it in physical form. Fans of the podcast Serial might enjoy this one for it's court aspect, with the added bonus of some zany and memorable characters. 4 stars

This book is chalk full of eccentric and sometimes amusing people. Savanah's architecture and lifestyle are introduced. In all, Savanah sounds like a lovely city. I really enjoyed the martini ritual when visiting the grave of Conrad Aiken and his tombstone.
After the descriptions of Savanah and it's loveliness, though, the rest of the book fell a bit flat. The people mentioned were eccentric.....but not all of them were part of the crime or the investigation. They were added purely for entertainment; they played no part in this story.
The crime was glossed over, it felt. Very little was told of the investigation or findings. What came out in court seemed sloppy and disjointed.
Also, the author himself admits to have "taken certain storytelling liberties, particularly having to do with the timing of events". Huh??!! That's as sloppy as the police work & investigation that occurred. A true crime story where the events have been altered?!

All in all, an entertaining enough read but without depth and one shouldn't consider this non-fiction. It's a fictionalized account of a crime.
I'm glad I read it and also glad that I can now put it aside.

”Now, you know how dead time works. Dead time lasts for one hour—from half an hour before midnight to half an hour after midnight. The half hour before midnight is for doin’ good. The half hour after midnight is for doin’ evil.”
“Right,” said Williams.
“Seems like we need a little of both tonight,” said Minerva, “so we best be on our way.”
…
For me, Savannah’s resistance to change was its saving grace. The city looked inward, sealed off from the noises and distractions of the world at large. It grew inward, too, and in such a way that its people flourished like hothouse plants tended by an indulgent gardener. The ordinary became extraordinary. Eccentrics thrived. Every nuance and quirk of personality achieved greater brilliance in that lush enclosure than would have been possible anywhere else in the world.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil has always been a difficult book to describe. On one level, it’s a nonfiction crime story about a murder trial (well, four of them) in Savannah, Georgia. In the early morning of May 2, 1981, Jim Williams, a wealthy, self-made antiques dealer, shot and killed Danny Hansford, his young, hot-tempered handyman/assistant. Was it murder or self-defense? Though the book runs through the end of the trials and the appeals, you’ll never really, truly know for sure whether justice was done in the case.

But what makes Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil so fascinating and memorable is that, even though it’s centered around this shooting and the legal drama that followed, it’s not really about those things at all. The shooting doesn’t even happen until the midpoint of the book. Instead, the book is about Savannah in the 1980s, and the unbelievably, wonderfully eccentric group of people there. Joe Odom, the piano playing con man affectionately known as the sentimental gentleman. Emmy Kelly, the Lady of 6000 Songs. The Married Woman’s Card Club, made up of exactly 16 women, no more no less. Defense attorney Sonny Seiler, owner of the University of Georgia’s bulldog mascots for the last 30 years. Minerva, the voodoo priestess Jim Williams hires to fix his trials. And perhaps the most famous real-life character of them all, The Lady Chablis, aka the Grand Empress of Savannah.

I was concerned that Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil might be a cringey re-read all these years later, with so much of the book being about a shooting by a gay man and about a black transgender woman. But I think the story held up well. The author holds no judgment of either character’s gender or sexuality. And while the author uses The Lady Chablis’s own moniker of “drag queen” instead of the word “transgender,” the story showed way-ahead-of-its-time sensitivity and support toward the issue. The Lady Chablis is larger than life, and outrageously over the top (never more so than when she crashes the black debutante ball), but she’s never anything other than a Lady.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is a unique reading experience. It only works because it’s nonfiction, and the goings on in beautiful, insular Savannah so funny—if these unbelievable characters were fictional, everyone would have rejected the story as too absurd. Highly recommended, and a must-read if you never have.