I've been boiling over with curiousity about one hardboiled
book: Black Wings Has My Angel, by Elliot Chaze.
In a Paperback Parade article, Barry Gifford claimed that
this book had been the hardest to find of all the titles he
really wanted to publish under Black Lizard. I'm not sure why
it didn't get published. It may have been that he couldn't
get the rights to it or it may have been that Black Lizard
sold before it could be printed and the new publisher had no
interest.
Nonetheless, as I've watched over the past couple years, even
beat-up copies of this novel have routinely gone for $80 on
ebay. Right now, there a nice copy with a current bid of $128
http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=254562883
. And it's not even retail customers bidding on the thing.
These are DEALERS like Lost Dutchman and Black Ace competing
with each other. Presumably, if they win the bid, these
dealers plan to sell it for much more. Heck, even a 1960s
reprint by Berkley (I think that was the publisher) of Angel
goes for big bucks.
Yes I know it's a Gold Medal novel, so there should be strong
demand for it. BUT it's one of the less-interesting Gold
Medal covers. Also, Chaze only wrote this one hardboiled
novel amongst his more literary works. Gold Medal books by
more popular HB authors like Harry Whittington or Gil Brewer
or Charles Williams go for quite a bit of money, but nothing
like this.
So what is it with Black Wings Has My Angel? Is this a rare
hardboiled/noir treat that's worth $128 because the story is
so damned good . . . or is it something else?
- Greg Swan
-- # To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to majordomo@icomm.ca. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 11 Feb 2000 EST