John Berendt, the popular and controversial author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, has a new book out focusing on the fire that destroyed Venice’s Fenice Opera House in 1996, and like his earlier blockbuster, it purports to be a work of nonfiction that reads like a novel. Berendt admitted in an author’s note that some of the events of Midnight were made up or reordered for “storytelling effect,” an admission which may have cost him the Pulitzer Prize. And, while he insists that he hasn’t done the same with the new book, there’s little question that Berendt’s work, while undeniably engaging to read, treads that uncomfortable line between reportorial fact and factually inspired fiction.