You know how you read a book or watch a movie and the lead character has a total failure of imagination? He kills a guy then goes home to pack rather than just hopping the next freight westward. Or he steals a million dollars and hangs around spending big in New York City rather than beating it for Santorini. A crucial section of Elliot Chaze’s 1953 thriller Black Wings Has My Angel hinges on just that sort of boneheadedness, but it in no way ruins the book because it’s simply too well constructed and written to be ruined by anything. Here’s a passage we liked:
Pretty soon a matronly brunette in a brocaded man’s dressing gown came skating out of a door and she and Virginia were hugging and kissing. It was good old Mamie. And Virginia I’ll be damned. And isn’t this a hell of a note. And Lord how I’ve wanted to see you. And when they were finished with the italics Mamie was shaking hands with me and shaking up some drinks we didn’t need.
That’s a bit beat, isn’t it? A bit Kerouac? Which is not to say Chaze is a literary giant in pulp clothing, but it’s still a cool little passage, and we’d say he possesses better technical chops than most of his peers. The only thing that mars the book—besides what we mentioned at top—is an ending that, in the interests of irony and symbolism, pushes the bounds of likelihood. But still, this was an excellent tale well told about a man who meets a dark and dangerous woman who becomes central to his plans to execute a spectacular robbery, then becomes central to his heart.
