Black Wings Has My Angel

About This Book

Published in 1953 by Gold Medal Books, Black Wings Has My Angel is a noir crime novel by Elliott Chaze (1915–1990) that many critics consider one of the finest paperback originals of the 1950s. The story is narrated by Tim Sunblade, an escaped convict hiding out in a Mississippi oil field, who falls into a volatile relationship with Virginia, a beautiful and ruthless call girl. Together they plan an armored truck robbery in the mountains of Colorado — a scheme that demands precision, nerve, and a mutual trust that neither of them can sustain.

Chaze's prose is lean, lyrical, and savagely funny by turns, and the doomed romance at the novel's center gives the heist plot an emotional weight rare in crime fiction. Ed Gorman called it the single best novel Gold Medal published during its heyday. After decades of obscurity — reprinted under different titles as One for My Money and One for the Money — the novel was restored to print by New York Review Books Classics in 2016. Chaze spent most of his career as a journalist in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

Excerpt

I'd been roughnecking on a drilling rig in the Atchafalaya River for better than sixteen weeks, racking the big silver stems of pipe, lugging the sacks of drilling mud from barge to shore, working with my back and guts and letting my mind coast.— Opening of Black Wings Has My Angel

What Critics Say

Perhaps the darkest of American noir novels and a perfect one— Christian Lorentzen

An underappreciated hard-boiled masterpiece— NPR Books

Many people feel this is the single best novel Gold Medal published during its heyday— Ed Gorman

Publication Details