Black Wings Has My Angel is a noir crime novel by American novelist Elliott Chaze, published by Gold Medal Books in 1953.

It centers on an escaped convict, Tim Sunblade, and his plot to rob an armored truck in Denver.

He is staying at a backwoods Louisiana motel after finishing up a four month stint working on a drilling rig on the Atchafalaya River, when he meets "Virginia", a call girl whom he hires for a night.

"The novel unfolds from here as the sort of love story in which either lover might turn in or murder the other at any moment until its last desperate pages.

"[1] The two wind up in Colorado, where Tim discovers a part of Virginia's past and what she is running from in fleeing New York.

One night Tim and Virginia go to a massage parlor, where an old friend Mamie, calls her "Jennie" and talks about how she was a debutante and came from a good family.

He recounts that he and Virginia go to New Orleans where they meet Eddie Arceneaux and his sister, Loralee, a couple of young adults from a wealthy family.

I was sick of Virginia, too, and of what the money had done to the both of us, changing a tough, elegant adventuress with plenty of guts and imagination into a candy-tonguing country club Cleopatra who nested in bed the whole day long and thought her feet were too damned good to walk on.

His sister Loralee tries to seduce Tim; when he returns to his room and finds it empty, he thinks Virginia has gone off with Eddie.

They make a run for it, and start a police chase that ends in Virginia killing the first cop and Tim getting out of the car.

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.

In the early 21st century, director Alfonso Pineda Ulloa and producer and co-writer Christopher Peditto spent more than a decade working to obtain the rights to the novel.

[2] Peditto and fellow screenwriter Gifford completed a screenplay for the film in 2012, and it was set to star Tom Hiddleston as Tim Sunblade, Anna Paquin as Virginia, and Elijah Wood as Eddie Arceneaux.

[4] Filming was scheduled to start in September 2012, but shooting was put on hold after Paquin gave birth to twins and wanted to take time with them.

New York Review Classics published a new edition, Black Wings Has My Angel (2016), with an introduction by Barry Gifford.