Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

John Berendt

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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.

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Praise for Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

  • 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 ReviewThe best non-fiction novel since IN COLD BLOOD and a lot more entertaining - Edmund WhiteEnthralling - Robert Winder, IndependentBerendt - 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 SundayPerfect storytelling - wildly funny, occasionally alarming and utterly enthralling - Moira Shearer, Daily Telegraph

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John Berendt

John Berendt

John Berendt is a journalist and former editor of New York magazine. His first book, MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL was an international bestseller. He lives in New York.

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