After serving as a paratrooper in Japan during World War II, Elliott Chaze (1915–1990) settled in Mississippi, where he worked for 20 years as an award-winning reporter and editor at the Hattiesburg American. His nine novels include The Stainless Steel Kimono, which he based on his wartime experiences, Goodbye Goliath, and Wettermark.
Black Wings Has My Angel
Paperback
(Reprint)
$12.95
- ISBN-13: 9781590179161
- Publisher: New York Review Books
- Publication date: 01/19/2016
- Series: NYRB Classics Series
- Edition description: Reprint
- Pages: 224
- Sales rank: 93,546
- Product dimensions: 5.00(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.60(d)
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One of the best crime novels of the 50's, and a sublime example of American Noir, is BLACK WINGS HAS MY ANGEL by Elliott Chaze, whose earlier war novel, THE STAINLESS STEEL KIMONO, was much admired by Ernest Hemmingway. Chaze took the standard dime store crime novel and turned it into an edgy piece of literature. His use of complex sentences, long descriptive passages, and characters who continue to surprise us throughout the narrative prove that the American crime novel was capable of greater depths.
The story follows the turbulent love affair of a pair of uprooted misfits, an ex-hooker and an ex-con, who are brought together by a mutual love of money. Adrift between the cracks of society, they form a bond that is less like love and more like fate. Left on their own they would have led lives of criminal mischief, misdemeanor and petty crime, but together, embarking on a dark journey across the American landscape, they create absolute mayhem.
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From the Publisher
"[W]hat remains unforgettable is [Chaze’s] lovers’ cat-and-mouse relationship, as high-voltage as the one depicted in James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice. Everything — murder, betrayal, self-sacrifice, great physical and psychological suffering — ultimately comes to seem trivial compared with the visceral intensity connecting Tim and Virginia.” —Michael Dirda, The Washington Post“[An] underappreciated hard-boiled masterpiece...The novel features everything we've come to love about noir crime fiction. The dialogue is crackling, stylized and often funny….Chaze's characters are more memorable than you often find in hard-boiled fiction….What makes Black Wings Has My Angel truly great is Chaze's writing, which is simple but elegant...Chaze's gift with words, combined with a plot that moves quickly toward its brutal, startling conclusion, makes Black Wings Has My Angel a trip worth taking for anybody with a taste for the darker side of crime fiction.” —Michael Schaub, NPR Books
“Probably the most cinematic story that’s never been filmed.” —Peter Lewis, Medium
“The exquisite writing is surprisingly contemporary, which makes it hard not to get sucked into this violent, vintage world…[Chaze] clearly knew the power of a good story, but more importantly, he had the style, in spades, to tell it with. This demonic artifact is the real deal; with its reemergence, fans of both pulp and literary fiction have reason to rejoice.” —Molly Boyle, Pasatiempo
"Black Wings Has My Angel is an indisputable noir classic, arguably the best of all the crime novels published by Gold Medal during its glory years...The details of the crime and its aftermath are vividly described, and the love-hate relationship between Sunblade and the woman and the demons in both that lead to their downfall are masterpieces of dark-side character development...Elliott Chaze was a fine prose stylist, witty, insightful, nostalgic, and irreverent, and a first-class storyteller." —Bill Pronzini
“Chaze was an electrifying hard-boiled prose stylist. There was clearly a humorous glint in his eye when he wrote, though he never allows the sleaze to get out of hand or undercut his story’s existential drift or its Cain-like fatalism.” —Graham Fuller
"Chaze is known in pulp circles for his flawless novel Black Wings Hath My Angel, which many people feel is the single best novel Gold Medal published during its heyday." —Ed Gorman