SOUTHERN GOTHIC, INC.

By GINIA BELLAFANTE

The visitors who have been flooding Savannah, Georgia, for the past year are not like ordinary tourists. They drive out to Bonaventure Cemetery and sometimes bring home clumps of dirt. They drop by Club One to see a lip-synching, black drag queen named Lady Chablis. They head to Hannah's East to hear Emma Kelly, dubbed the "lady of 6,000 songs." They ask residents how they can track down the voodoo priestess Minerva and want directions to Mercer House, the elegant home on Monterey Square where a fatal shooting occurred. And almost invariably, they walk around with copies of "the Book."

In Savannah these days, when people talk about "the Book," they are referring not to the Bible but to Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, the best-selling suspense yarn by journalist John Berendt. The true account of a notorious 1981 Savannah homicide case, the book is now in its 46th printing and three weeks ago, passed the one-year mark on the New York Times' best-seller list. It has been translated into six languages, including Norwegian, is being developed as a movie by Warner Bros., and has sparked a tourist boom in the genteel town of Savannah. Says Susan Weiner, the city's mayor: "We are all now walking tour books."

Berendt's book recounts the bizarre story of Jim Williams, a socially prominent antiques dealer who was tried four times for shooting and killing Danny Hansford, a Camaro-driving handyman and hustler. But the book is no typical true-crime thriller; it is as close to Paul Theroux as it is to Dominick Dunne. Populated by a townful of Southern Gothic characters, from patrician bon vivants like the polo-playing Harry Cram to Williams' canny, football-obsessed lawyer Sonny Seiler to local eccentrics like maid Gloria Daniels, who conducted tours of her employer's mansion, occasionally supplementing them with renditions of Stormy Weather, the book is a portrait of a gossipy and class-conscious Savannah--mannered, monied and soaked to its soul in the finest bourbon.

"I've read books that have intrigued me, but nothing like this," says Dan Hendricks of Tyler, Texas, who recently went to Savannah to "follow the book." Like other students of Berendt's eerie travelogue, Hendricks stopped in at Club One to see the Lady Chablis, the former Miss Gay Georgia who provides wry commentary in the story on Savannah's racial climate. With the help of a bookstore owner, Hendricks also found Jerry Spence, who appears as a hairdresser to several other characters, and got his autograph. "Not a day goes by that people don't ask me to sign their book," says Spence. "I always circle my name on page 47 and say, See me on page 80."

Except for a few dissenters, the citizens of Savannah have welcomed the influx of Midnight enthusiasts. Locals give guided tours of the book's notable sites, like the Bonaventure Cemetery, where the homicide victim used to collect his thoughts and rendezvous with his girlfriend, and Mercer House, the scene of the killing. Predictably, Savannah's merchants offer plenty of Midnight memorabilia like maps and T shirts. A cafa featured in the book now serves "fresh salads from our garden of good and evil."

The tremendous popularity of the book is something Berendt, a former editor of New York magazine and current columnist for Esquire, had not anticipated. A native of Syracuse, New York, he got the idea for his book three years after he took a weekend trip to Savannah in 1982. But the first literary agent to whom he submitted his manuscript turned it down, claiming it was too local and uncommercial. "When I was writing it people asked me if I thought it would be a best seller," says Berendt, "and I said, 'Are you kidding?' I thought it would be a cult favorite and a critical success. I didn't think about a big audience."

But his publisher did. The book's authentic popularity has been boosted by an aggressive publicity campaign. Random House sent Berendt on an unusually extensive 38-city media tour and several times has sent him to Savannah to shepherd reporters on a personalized author's tour. Cathie Matthews, a real-estate broker from Little Rock, Arkansas, saw the promotional ingenuity up close. When she bought the 400,000th copy of the book in December, inside she found a hand-written note from Berendt, telling her to call Random House for a free trip to Savannah. She paid her visit last week. Berendt, who guided her around town, only worried that Matthews was not sufficiently exposed to the city's weird side. "She saw the beauty of Savannah," he says, "but I'm not sure she got the bizarreness of it.'' For that, of course, she can simply reread the book.

--Reported by Adam Cohen/Savannah

With reporting by ADAM COHEN/SAVANNAH