[In the following review, Jones describes Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil as an affectionate portrait of Savannah, noting its popularity with Georgia audiences.]

Yankees have always been beguiled by Savannah. When Gen. William T. Sherman cut his incendiary swath through the South in 1864, he spared Savannah and presented it to President Lincoln as a Christmas present. A century later, Esquire columnist John Berendt showed up for a long weekend, wound up living there off and on for eight years and concluded his stay with a book-length bread-and-butter note, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

At first glance, Berendt's nonfiction portrait of Georgia's oldest city looks like anything but a proper thank-you. The characters he celebrates include a drag queen, a piano-playing deadbeat, a man who walks an imaginary dog and another fellow who's said to possess enough poison to spike Savannah's entire water supply. Those are the warm-up acts. At the heart of the book lies a celebrated murder case in which Jim Williams, a socially prominent and autocratic antique dealer, was accused of shooting his young male lover. Savannahians still rehash this decade-old case, and small wonder. No Gothic novelist could concoct a riper tale: the suave but sinister Williams went on trial four times before he won acquittal, while the dead boyfriend was eulogized by local wags as "a walking streak of sex." With all this, Berendt has fashioned a Baedeker to Savannah that, while it flirts with condescension, is always contagiously affectionate. Few cities have been introduced more seductively.

But how does Savannah feel about it? Berendt's book full of anecdotes proves that Savannahians love to talk about their city, but they're not too keen on faint praise from outsiders. In 1946, when Lady Astor came to call, the old downtown was a shambles. She called the city "a beautiful woman with a dirty face." People still bring that up.

Judging by the action downtown at the E. Shaver book-shop one recent afternoon, Savannah is in no mood to quarrel. While Berendt autographed more than 1,200 books, the mood inside and on the sidewalk out front was convivial and gossipy. Matrons in Mercedeses and lawyers from old white-shoe firms hailed their chums with "Are you in the book?" Those who were had the odd habit of volunteering the page number on which they appeared, as though it were a title, or an honorary degree. One nattily coiffed man introduced himself as "Jimmy Taglioli, page 181." He was Jim Williams's barber and he had nothing but praise for Berendt. "He got those people to a T." He would not speak ill of Williams (who died of a heart attack soon after his acquittal). "He was a very nice man. He was just confused about some things."

Williams left Savannah confused about a few things as well. Before the murder, his homosexuality was neither disparaged nor endorsed. But when Williams's open secret hit the front page, the city was forced to reassess the rules and rigging of its social structure. Berendt used the Williams case like a crowbar to get inside Savannah's psyche. He found an inward-looking city determined to keep things "just the way they are." (A list of major exports reads like a bill of lading from colonial times: tobacco, cotton, sugar, clay—clay!—and wood pulp.) Ironically, Berendt discovered, it's this aversion to progress that's preserved the city's character while so much of the country has coasted toward blandness: "Savannah's resistance to change was its saving grace."

A number of the natives are quick to dispute Berendt's conclusions. "He makes too much of Savannah society being closed to outsiders," one said. "Hell, anybody can come here and get into society if they've got the money, the inclination and they're white." Sometimes the reaction is more personal. In a restaurant, Berendt went to say hello to one of the few figures who comes off looking bad in the book. The man drew back: "Don't come near me." Not all the locals are so riled. The best review comes from Gloria Daniels ("I'm on page 259"), housekeeper for Joe Odum, the book's convivial Greek chorus who was infamous around town for conducting historic tours through homes he didn't own. Daniels praises the book and then says fervently, "I got to get Mr. John's address. I want him to do my obituary before I die." No writer could ask for a greater vote of confidence.