In the finest traditions of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, Berendt's captivating work is as much a survey of small town American life and eccentricity as it is the story of a crime, as the residents of Savannah, Georgia reveal their suspicions about the murder of a local male prostitute.
Genteel society ladies who compare notes on their husbands' suicides. A hilariously foul-mouthed black drag queen. A voodoo priestess who works her roots in the graveyard at midnight. A morose inventor who owns a bottle of poison powerful enough to kill everyone in town. A prominent antiques dealer who hangs a Nazi flag from his window to disrupt the shooting of a movie. And a redneck gigolo whose conquests describe him as a 'walking streak of sex'.
These are some of the real residents of Savannah, Georgia, a city whose eccentric mores are unerringly observed - and whose dirty linen is gleefully aired - in this utterly irresistible book. At once a true-crime murder story and a hugely entertaining and deliciously perverse travelogue, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is as bracing and intoxicating as half-a-dozen mint juleps.
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
ISBN: 9780340992852
Number of pages: 400
Weight: 284 g
Dimensions: 197 x 168 x 27 mm
Elegant and wicked . . . Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil might be the first true-crime book that makes the reader want to book a bed and breakfast for an extended weekend at the scene of the crime. - The New York Times Book Review
The best non-fiction novel since IN COLD BLOOD and a lot more entertaining - Edmund White
Enthralling - Robert Winder, Independent
Berendt - and the reader - are in travel-writer heaven . . . This is a book which leaves you amused, spooked and introduced to a new piece of America - Mark Lawson, Independent on Sunday
Perfect storytelling - wildly funny, occasionally alarming and utterly enthralling - Moira Shearer, Daily Telegraph
A fascinating step into the microcosm of Savannah, Georgia in the 1980s. The characters are larger than life, eccentric, interesting and leap off the page with Berendt's sharp observations and well written... More
This book plunges you into a scandalous crime scene in Savannah society and doesn't let you come up for air. It's so engrossing, full of fascinating character studies and interesting twists.
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