SOURCE: "Even in the Best of Cities," in Book World—The Washington Post, February 6, 1994, p. 3.

[Yardley is an American critic and biographer. In the following review, he praises Berendt's elegant prose and sharp eye in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.]

Herewith one of the most unusual books to come this way in a long time, and one of the best. Indeed it is two fine books for the price of one. The first is a portrait of Savannah, "a rare vestige of the Old South," a "hushed and secluded bower of a city on the Georgia coast." The second is a true-crime account of the murder of a young male hustler named Danny Hansford and the four murder trials undergone by his sometime employer and lover, Jim Williams, "a successful dealer in antiques and a restorer of old houses." No doubt it is this second...