in jail. The cops had thought they were suspects in a grocery store robbery. They question him but he refuses to reveal information about Virginia. Virginia is also caught and thrown in jail. After she seduces and knocks out a jailer, they escape and fly to Denver. In Colorado, they stay at the hotel in a secluded part where an old mine shaft is. They blend in with the tourists, going skiing and finally renting a house out there. Virginia starts to obsess about death and being in the electric chair. One day, they go out skiing and for a picnic near the mine shaft. They both feel drawn to it, tempted to look inside. They inch their way towards the open shaft and finally look into the 600-foot drop. Feeling relieved, they start to dance. Virginia suddenly slips and falls into the shaft opening and lands on an unstable rubble outcropping 40 feet down—still alive and screaming. Tim panics and goes back to the hotel to find rope, where he runs into his "old FBI friend", Clell Dooley, who had prosecuted him. Clell notices Tim when he runs out the door to go back to Virginia. When Clell and four or five other men find Tim, he is sitting near the mine shaft, thinking about Virginia. Tim had seen that 40 or so feet down in the mine shaft, there was "a lump", like a rock sticking out and nothing else. Tim asks the men if they have seen Virginia; they carry him off, presumably to jail. Characters Reviews Ed Gorman wrote "Chaze is known in pulp circles for his flawless novel Black Wings Has My Angel, which many people feel is the single best novel Gold Medal published during its heyday." In his introduction to the new 2016 edition, screenwriter Barry Gifford wrote, "nothing else Chaze wrote came anywhere close to what he had accomplished on all levels in Black Wings." The book review website The Pequod rated the book a 9.5 (out of 10.0), calling it “a bleak and seedy noir masterpiece… Chaze’s hard-boiled prose is what carries the novel.” In a 2016 retrospective review, Vulture described the book as “a perfect crime novel.” Bill Pronzini wrote that "Black Wings Has My Angel is a book that must be experienced, not read quickly for casual entertainment. It makes demands on the reader, as any piece of quality