Elliott Chaze (1915–1990) was born in Mamou, Louisiana,
and attended Washington and Lee, Tulane, and the University of
Oklahoma before joining the New Orleans bureau of the Associated
Press. He served in the army during the Second World War and was
stationed in Japan in the early days of the American occupation, an
experience that informed his first novel, The Stainless Steel
Kimono (1947). After returning to the United States and living for
a time in Denver, Chaze moved to Mississippi, where he would spend
the rest of his career as a reporter, columnist, and city editor at
the Hattiesburg American. In all, Chaze wrote nine novels,
including Goodbye Goliath, Wettermark, and Tiger in the
Honeysuckle, and contributed articles and short stories to Life,
Reader’s Digest, The New Yorker, Redbook, Collier’s, and
Cosmopolitan.
Barry Gifford has written fiction, nonfiction, poetry,
screenplays, and librettos, and has contributed to many
publications, including The New Yorker, Esquire, Rolling Stone,
Brick, Film Comment, and The New York Times. His film credits
include Wild at Heart, Perdita Durango, Lost Highway, City of
Ghosts, Ball Lightning, and The Phantom Father. Among his most
recent books are Sailor & Lula: The Complete Novels, Imagining
Paradise: New and Selected Poems, The Roy Stories, The Up-Down, and
Writers.
"Perhaps the darkest of American noir novels and a perfect one."
—Christian Lorentzen, Christian Lorentzen's Newsletter
"[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
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