Book Review: Black Wings Has My Angel by Elliott Chaze
After reading this book, I just might have to look for a mysterious ex-convict with a fake name to pull off a heist with me.
Black Wings Has My Angel by Elliott Chaze is a classic crime noir about a Bonnie-and-Clyde style couple—Tim Sunblade and Virginia—and their adventure of a heist. I won’t spoil whether they pull it off or not, because their success or failure is not what makes this book special.
Written in the 1950s, this book belonged to the heyday of crime fiction, but managed to survive longer than its companions and still be considered excellent in the present day. It’s been described online as the “perfect” crime novel, and I agree.
I grew up reading crime and mysteries with Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, and as I got older, those books turned into Agatha Christie, then Stephen King. I hate true crime and I scare easily, but I love the suspense of a good fictional mystery or horror.
This book was no exception. Chaze’s style was fantastic. Even after the heist was over, I was on the edge of my seat with these two characters and their shenanigans.
Virginia was interestingly written. She was over sexualized, as I would expect from a 1950s novel, but she had some defining traits that prevented her from becoming a caricature. She shared Tim’s greed and lust for money, and she was affectionate, but selfish to a point.
“She was sitting on the floor, naked, in a skitter of green bills. Beyond her was the custodian, still simpering in death. She was scooping up handfuls of the green money and dropping it on top of her head so that it came sliding down along the cream-colored hair, slipping down along her shoulders and body. She was making a noise I never heard come out of a human being.”
What a description! Witty, descriptive, and funny, Chaze creates a fascinating character with Tim as the narrator. He describes the book’s events with a series of metaphors and assertions about life that could only come from a man on the run.
“If your life can hang from a chewing gum wrapper it can hang from anything in the book. It can hang from a bullet no bigger than a bean, or from a cigarette smoked in bed, or a bad breakfast that causes the doctor to sew the absorbent cotton inside you.”
The book is full of these striking descriptions, and they liven up the duller moments in Tim and Virginia’s adventures. Usually novels that surround a big crime tend to drag before and after the big event, but this one kept drawing me in.
They were both unlikeable and criminal, but still compelling. Chaze gave them each just enough morals to make them interesting, and their guilt was beautifully written. The last few chapters will stick with me for a while.
I loved this novel. If you’re looking for a suspenseful, readable book, this one is for you. Maybe I’ll read more mysteries from this time period soon—unless I decide to pull a heist of my own.
