[In the following review, the critic offers a laudatory assessment of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.]

Two stories make up [John Berendt's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil: A Savannah Story]: the detailed account of a 1981 murder case involving Jim Williams, a prominent citizen of Savannah, and Danny Hansford, a young hustler who died in the study of Williams's antique-laden mansion; and a quirky travelogue devoted to the history, architecture, and citizenry of Savannah, where Berendt lived off and on during the nineteen-eighties. Although the twin narratives are not always seamlessly joined, and the prose suffers occasionally from overripeness, there is plenty of local color here to keep the reader up at night. An inscrutable voodoo practitioner, a bubba-boosting defense attorney, and a cadging piano-bar owner are memorable, but it is in the chapters given over to Chablis, a tough, sassy transvestite performer, that Berendt transforms his book from an amusing document into a work of art. Summing up her burgeoning stage career, Chablis tells the author, "The South is one big drag show, honey, and they all know The Lady. They all know The Doll." Thanks to Berendt, the rest of the country can now know her, too.