Apparently, this book has been so influential that it has significantly increased the tourist traffic through Savannah. After reading it, it is easy to understand why - even I found myself itching with the urge to visit the place at some point, if for no other reason than to see if half the stories told about it were true.
Part travelogue, part true-crime thriller - with copious supernatural elements also thrown into the mix - the book defies simple description, and the author uses precise, non-sensational, almost diffident language to describe a superabundance of eccentric, larger-than-life characters and bizarre and mannered social rituals.
The story has, as its loose focus, the relationship between local millionaire Jim Williams and his handyman/lover, Danny - a relationship that ends in Williams shooting the younger man dead. Was it murder, or self-defence? Berendt does not pretend to offer any answers, instead settling for telling the few facts that he can actually attest to (and, added to which, of course, is a good dollop of the entertaining hearsay of the Savannah-ites he meets), and leaving the reader to draw their own conclusions.
Trial and retrial follow on, and behind the courtroom scenes one senses a world of political manoeuvring, old enemies, and the genteel but ultra-conservative morality of the Old South. Williams, enigmatic and cunning on one hand (he privately discusses deliberately changing his testimony with the author before a meeting with his lawyer), on the other possessing a deeply gullible streak (he plays Psychic Dice and engages a voodoo priestess to assist at his trial) is a compelling character, who has been known to hang Nazi banners from his window ledge to foil rude film-makers attempting to shoot Civil War movies in his neighbourhood. His lover, Danny, the beautiful hustler with an emotional age of nine, is hardly any less eccentric, growing sulky and violent when women he has only just met refuse his offers of marriage.
But it is also the story of the city itself, and its inhabitants take centre stage. Inhabitants such as the charming but amoral entrepreneurial neighbour who runs a constant gamut of lawsuits for passing bad checks and failing to pay his bills, (and who we first meet when an aggrieved elderly woman throws a brick through his window), and the bawdy, wonderful Lady Chablis, transsexual entertainer, who crashes the black Debutantes' Ball when the author rashly refuses to take her as his date. The verismultitude of characters is striking, and they are wonderfully, sharply drawn.
The title, "Midnight In The Garden of Good and Evil", refers to the graveyard where the voodoo priestess conjures the spirits of the dead to beg their assistance in Williams' case (and also to nag her dead lover/voodoo mentor for winning lottery numbers). This balance of the poignant and the hilarious, the tragic and the comic, is what characterises this story and what ultimately makes it such an enjoyable, and yet haunting read.