Gold Medal books weren't books that won literary awards, or any kind of awards
at all. But during the 1950s Gold Medal put out some of the best writers America
had to offer, writers like Jim Thompson, Chester Himes, and David Goodis, who
not only peered into the bleakest reaches of the psyche, but did it with
blood-tinged glee. And while many of the Gold Medal pulps have since become
acknowledged classics, one of its finest, Elliott Chaze's Black Wings Has My
Angel, has remained in the shadows, passed along from reader to reader despite
being championed by the likes of Ed Gorman and Bill Pronzini.