The Liquidator #4: Invitation To A Strangling

The Liquidator #4: Invitation To A Strangling, by R.L. Brent

No month stated, 1975  Award Books

The penultimate volume of The Liquidator is another good one, the mysterious R.L. Brent turning in another fast-moving pulp thriller that has the vibe of a ‘50s Gold Medal paperback, only brought into the ‘70s. Brent also gets back to the continuity of the first two volumes; whereas the previous volume was sort of a one-off affair, Invitation To A Strangling continues with the storyline initiated with the first volume: Jake Brand’s war against the Mob in general and mob honcho Vincent Orsini in particular. 

Once again we have a cover blurb from King Features, but what I’ve failed to mention all this time is that the blurb refers to this as a “tough cop series.” Jake Brand is not a cop! Sure, he originally was, but The Liquidator is no more a “tough cop series” than The Lone Wolf is. Indeed, the two series are pretty similar, what with the setup of a tough former cop going out for justice on his own, but of course Lone Wolf is a bit more shall we say “surreal” in its treatment of the subject.

As I’ve mentioned before, The Liquidator was also one of the very few men’s adventure series to attain any sort of critical attention – at least judging from the cover blurbs – which makes it odd that the series disappeared for three years after this volume. After Invitation To A Strangling, The Liquidator did not return until 1978’s The Exchange, which dropped the cover design of the first four books and also dropped the volume numbers entirely. It was also published by Charter, not Award, so perhaps the Award-Charter transition played some factor in the delay of the fourth volume. 

As usual I’m getting ahead of myself. Invitation To A Strangling picks up on threads from the second volume; Gwen, the hotstuff babe who was a mobster’s girl in the first volume before becoming Jake Brand’s girl, returns to the series – for a brief time, at least. I’m not giving away any spoilers, as the title of this fourth volume refers to Gwen’s fate, and also the back cover tells us exactly what happens to her. Long story short, Gwen has been living in hiding in the (apparently short) time since the second volume; she’s staying in Raleigh, North Carolina, boarding with an older married couple who were acquaintances of Brand’s. 

Meanwhile the Mob has figured out where Gwen is. Orsini tasks a scar-necked thug named Monk Simon with fronting a team of Syndicate assassins to do the job; in R.L. Brent’s typical gift for hardboiled prose, we are told that “[Monk] wanted the job almost as much as Robinson Crusoe must have wanted a piece of ass.” Monk has a personal score to settle with Brand, as Monk was arrested by the man himself once upon a time. Monk puts together a team of misfits who seem to have come out of The Butcher; ironic, then, that one of the misfits is even nicknamed “Butcher,” which makes me wonder if R.L. Brent was intentionally referencing that other men’s adventure series. 

Orsini further instructs Monk that he is to kill Gwen and the couple she is staying with, and make it such a gory scene that the story will be picked up nationally, so as to ensure Jake Brand will hear about it and come running to Raleigh, where Monk and team are further instructed to kill Brand when he shows. Finally, Orsini – who by the way looks more like a kindly grandfather than a mob boss, we’re told – tells Monk that the women should be raped before being killed. “Fringe benefits,” as Monk thinks to himself. 

As I read Invitation To A Strangling, I couldn’t help but think that this was a plot tailor-made for Manning Lee Stokes. I could only imagine the lurid novel he would’ve turned in; Stokes worked a rape-strangling scene into practically every novel he wrote, and that’s the entirety of Monk Simon’s plan in this one. But whereas Brent covers the grisly topic in a taut, gripping chapter, Stokes probably would’ve spent at least a quarter of the novel on it, if not more. But, as evidenced by the title and spoiled by the back cover, Monk and team are successful – and, by the way, Brent is not too exploitative in the rape-murder sequence, which would be another difference from how Stokes would’ve handled it. 

Indeed, Gwen’s fate is left off-page, and Monk isn’t even the one who does her in; he enjoys his “fringe benefits,” having lusted after the sexy and well-built Gwen for a long time. After he’s had his fill, Monk turns Gwen over to one of the “Creech brother,” simian misfits (one of ‘em being the “Butcher” guy), and it’s one of them who strangles Gwen during the act. Brent is sure to dig the knife in us readers, though, having opened the book with Gwen pining for Jake and hoping she’ll see him again – even having refrained from sex in the time she’s been in Raleigh, as she’s so hung up on Brand. 

As for Brand himself, he’s busy getting laid. There’s no pickup from the previous volume; Jake (as Brent most often refers to him in the narrative) is just laying low as usual from the mob and he’s been thinking about Gwen lately. After knocking off a hippie-type pimp who thinks he might collect on the mob’s bounty on the Liquidator’s head, Jake heads to Raleigh to see Gwen again – and meanwhile, we readers already know that Monk and crew are going there that very night to kill her. 

Brent avoids what otherwise would have been a hard-to-buy coincidence; Jake’s car breaks down in some no-name town, and the local mechanic takes a couple days to fix it. And meanwhile the guy’s hotstuff daughter-in-law, a busty blonde former cheerleader, makes her interest in Jake clearly known; her husband was killed in ‘Nam, and she’s lonesome and horny as hell. As with previous books, Brent delivers a sex scene that’s somewhat explicit but not full-bore sleazy, with lines like, “The sound she made when he entered her resembled a growl.” Brent as I’ve said many times before is a pulp writer who knows his stuff; I particularly appreciate how he always finds the opportunity to mention the breasts of female characters. 

So as we know from the back cover, Jake arrives too late to save Gwen. And he doesn’t go on as big of a warpath as one might expect; indeed, Jake takes the loss with a sort of nonchalance at first, though Brent gradually builds up Jake’s true feelings as the narrative progresses. Not that this stops Jake from picking up another chick; Leila, another hotstuff babe (in true lone wolf fashion, Jake Brand always picks up hotstuff babes), this one a redhead who works as a reporter for a Raleigh newspaper. 

Jake’s seen the media coverage of Gwen’s murder, of course, and knows it’s a mob setup. He also knows Orsini is behind it. There’s a cool bit where Jake deals with two of Orsini’s backup assassins, who are staying in the house across the street from Gwen’s. The female assassin in particular is set up very nicely, but there’s no hanky-panky between her and Jake; she’s just out to kill him for the Organization. These are the types of action setpieces Brent delivers throughout, by the way; The Liquidator does not go for big action affairs a la The Executioner, and instead it’s usually just Jake with a .45 (his favored gun) or a .38, taking on one or two opponents. 

And meanwhile Jake gets laid again – courtesy Leila. Jake sees her on the news, comments on how hot she is, and seeks her out. I’m not sure why Brent didn’t just make the character of Leila a TV reporter; Jake sees her on TV because Leila is being interviewed. At any rate, she writes for the local paper, and has researched the murder, so Jake hunts her down for info. Leila will prove to be the main female protagonist in the novel; Brent delivers a few somewhat-explicit sex scenes between the two (ie, “[Jake] slid deeply into her welcoming warmth,” etc). 

Leila also makes possible an injection of Blaxploitation into the world of The Liquidator. As ever R.L. Brent cuts across a broad group of characters, from Jake Brand to the mobsters who are out to kill him, and from sequences with the latter group Brent has cagily dropped mention of a superfly black pimp waltzing around the streets of Raleigh. Monk Simon sees the guy, notices him doing un-pimp things like buying milk at a convenience store. Gradually we learn this is Sugar Boy Hollis, “one of the ten best-dressed macks in the southeastern United States,” as Leila puts it; she often pays the pimp for underworld info. And also, we learn Sugar Boy bought the milk due to a stomach ulcer! Unfortunately though, he’s only in one brief scene, providing Jake with the very useful info of where Monk and his crew are staying. 

Brent keeps the action moving, and there are no slow parts in Invitation To A Strangling. Even the sequences from the perspectives of Monk and his crew are entertaining, given the author’s skill. Which makes it all the more of a mystery why R.L. Brent – supposedly Larry Powell – did not go on to write more books. There’s a fight in an alleyway in which Jake is nearly run over, and also Jake’s takedown of the sadists who killed Gwen is effectively handled. Also these scenes again remind me of something I’ve mentioned before: Jake Brand is not the best strategist. Often he just storms into a situation with no consideration of how he’ll get out of it, but of course he manages to win due to his stubborn resolve. 

There’s a third girl in the story, a college co-ed who is the daughter of the couple Gwen was living with, but Brent doesn’t do much with her; she only factors into the finale, when Jake is taken to a cabin in the woods where Monk thinks he’s going to take out the Liquidator. Even here Brent goes for a realistic approach, and in fact Monk’s sendoff is somewhat of a surprise, but still effectively handled. Otherwise the takeaway from this finale is that Jake Brand is willing to put his life on the line to save an innocent person – as mentioned, Brent also effectively conveys how Jake’s sense of loss over Gwen’s murder gradually affects him more and more, to the point that he makes selfless decisions to prevent more innocent lives being taken. 

Other stuff I appreciate was how Leila, the newspaper reporter, intended to do a feature story on the Liquidator – and by the way, it’s official that this is Jake’s name, now, as both he and Orsini refer to it. There’s also an appearance by Jake’s mentor, a retired old cop named Nate, who tries to work with Leila to convince Jake to give himself up before the Mafia can kill him. 

Invitation To A Strangling ends with Jake Brand deciding to lay low for a while; “he knew how to disappear,” Brent informs us in the closing pages. The last we see of him, Jake is boarding a bus to Virginia, and he’s considering growing a mustache to change his appearance. It would appear he was very successful in disappearing; as mentioned, it would not be until 1978 that Jake Brand resurfaced, in The Exchange. With a plot concerning mob involvement in the porn industry, this is one I might check out sooner rather than later. 

Summing up, The Liquidator is one of the better men’s adventure series from the ‘70s – it’s better even than the majority of the bestselling crime novels of the day that I’ve read – and Invitation To A Strangling is another strong entry.

The Liquidator #3: The Cocaine Connection

The Liquidator #3: The Cocaine Connection, by R.L. Brent

No month stated, 1974  Award Books

The third volume of The Liquidator dispenses with the continuity that linked the first two volumes and comes off more like a standalone piece, the mysterious “R.L. Brent” (supposedly Larry Powell) dropping a lot of the earlier subplots and focusing solely on hero Jake “The Liquidator” Brand’s attempt to bust a Syndicate drug pipeline in Florida. That said, the book still retains the “hardboiled ‘70s” vibe of the previous books. 

Brent pulls a trick from the template of contemporary men’s adventure magazine yarns: The Cocaine Connection opens toward the end of the story, with an unarmed and injured Brand being chased through darkened woods by rifle-toting goons. We are quickly told that Brand’s cover has been blown, they’re onto him, and if they catch him he’s dead. Then they catch him, and the story flashes back about a week. It won’t be until page 160 that we get back to this opening incident, but the main effect is that we know from the start that Brand’s cover is going to be blown, which makes pretty much the entirety of the ensuing narrative moot! 

But as usual R.L. Brent is too gifted a writer to make it all seem like a waste of time. The taut, effective prose of the earlier books is still present, as is the tough vibe. I just had a problem with the overall story of this one. So as we know, Jake Brand was once a top cop and was put in prison on fake charges, all of which was recounted in the first volume. Brand’s out now and has been exacting vengeance on the Syndicate bastards who put the frame on him, but the mastermind of the plot, Crosetti, has thus far escaped Brand. 

Rather than follow through on this revenge angle, R.L. Brent instead gussies up the plot with Brant venturing down to Florida to impersonate a Syndicate rep in the hopes of undoing a cocaine line that’s been put together, supposedly, by Crosetti. The reasoning here is that Brand’s trying to find Crosetti, so I guess he figures that if he busts up his coke ring the man himself will show up. Or something. As stated, The Cocaine Connection is mostly a standalone, and could just as easily be an installment of Narc, with Brand almost acting as an undercover Federal agent. Indeed, people even believe he is an undercover Fedearl agent in this one. 

You know, back in the first volume I speculated that this was a sort-of “near future” series, in that the events of the first volume seemed to take place in 1973, and in that same book Brand was sent to prison for five years. Meaning, it was 1978 when he got out, a few years after the publication date. But in The Cocaine Connection we’re informed a rich guy is driving a 1974 model car, with the implication that it’s brand new, so maybe Brent just dropped the idea, or maybe even more preposterously I was just wrong. Otherwise this volume does refer back to the first volume quite often, mostly because Brand ventures to Miami in this one for the first time since he was a cop. 

There’s still a bit of a Parker vibe with Brand using his underworld connections to find Crosetti. It’s in this way that Brand learns of the cocaine pipeline; long story short, a remote island off Florida called Reese’s Bluff seems to be the location where a Syndicate courier makes the payoff for the cocaine, the importation of which is handled by a non-Syndicate organization. In order to finally get Crosetti, Brand decides to go down there and bust up the pipeline. He manages to find the guy who handles the payoff, getting in a long car chase with him in the process. 

From there it’s into the “undercover agent” scenario…but again, we know from page one that Brand’s cover is fated to be blown. Reese’s Bluff is essentially a small town blocked off from the rest of society, and Brand is immediately treated with suspicion when he shows up there – posing as “Luther Martin,” new Syndicate money man. Like a regular Mack Bolan, Jake Brand is such a natural at pretending to be a mobster that he manages to fool the people he hands the coke payoff money to. It doesn’t hurt matters that the wife of the head honcho happens to be a busty redhead in her 30s who immediately has an eye for Brand – and eagerly thinks about getting him into bed. 

This leads to one of the more humorous lines I’ve recently read; the horny redhead is named Liz and Brand is certain she was doing the previous Syndicate money man. So Brand starts pushing her buttons and, when she shows him to a spare room he can sleep in that night, he basically invites her to slide into bed with him for some sex that night, capping it off with the unforgettable line: “I like to be awakened by a pair of naked tits in my back.” Well who doesn’t?? Of course this only serves to make Liz even more horny and she does this very thing to awaken Brand shortly thereafter, leading to a somewhat explicit conjugation between the two. 

Another memorable bit follows, when Brand’s jumped by a trio of goons who work for the lady’s wife. This is a brutal sequence of hand-to-hand combat that could almost come out of Gannon, only without the spiked knuckles ripping out eyeballs or anything. Otherwise Brent again displays his ability to write “realistic” crime pulp with a woozy, hurt Brand managing to defend himself against three opponents – and get the upper hand, thanks to a tire iron that he puts to violent work. A super cool sequence that is probably one of the more tense action scenes I’ve read in a while. 

But regardless I feel the plot of The Cocaine Connection just doesn’t make much sense. For reasons I couldn’t understand, Brand stays in Reese’s Bluff and, uh, “bluffs” his way into the upper echelons of the non-Syndicate coke ring. Why? He tells them he’s an upwardly-mobile goon who wants a bigger piece of the pie, or whatever, but what makes no sense is that it is of course all bullshit and one phone call could undo Brand’s entire disguise. It gets even goofier when he meets the brains of the non-Syndicate cocaine ring, Hamilton Reese, Brand doesn’t just kill him – even though he knows he should – and just continues with his charade. 

Meanwhile, he gets laid again: this courtesy Hamilton Reese’s “small breasted” hotstuff daughter, Valerie, who like Liz immediately lets Brand know of her interests. He must certainly be virile, given that per the plot he’s been banged out of shape and has various stitches on him, thanks to the aforementioned fight with the three thugs. But Valerie still lets her interests clearly be known. The payoff of this subplot will upset the sensitive readers of today: when Valerie catches Brand snooping around the house that night, he pushes her into her room and forces himself on her. But given that she’s just as much a nympho as Liz, she’s all for it, even if it’s “the next thing to rape,” leading to another somewhat-explicit sex scene. 

It's to Brent’s credit that the lead-up to Brand’s cover being blown is filled with tension, even though we already know it’s bound to happen. He’s guilty of a little revisionism, though; I got a chuckle out of how, in the opening pages, Brent states several times that Brand is unarmed…then, later in the book, we’re told that Brand straps a sharp letter opener to his calf, hidden under his pants. When he finally uses it, once the narrative picks up from those opening pages, we’re informed “he almost forgot about” the knife that he’d hidden on himself! The cynic in me could almost think that R.L. Brent was just coming up with all this on the fly. 

The finale is pretty cool. After being “the hunted,” Brand decides to “go hunting” and tracks down the coke pipeline runners one by one. Memorable stuff follows, like one guy impaling himself on the spike that’s used for copy sheets in a printing office. But it’s a little rushed at times, with some of Brand’s vengeance-sating not being exploited to the full extent. Brent does wrap up one of the major revenge angles of the series, but by novel’s end The Liquidator is prepared to keep on liquidating; and we get a hint that he might finally start hunting down that lookalike who framed him the first volume. 

Overall The Cocaine Connection was another fun entry in The Liquidator, with the same tough, terse vibe as the previous two books. It just felt a bit disconnected, given the entire “undercover” angle of the plot. Otherwise I’d certainly agree with no less than King Features and their cover blurb – and I’m starting to suspect that The Liquidator was one of the very few (only?) men’s adventure series that got any industry cred because publisher Award-Universal was probably affiliated with King Features, but who knows. I’m sure a simple Google search would explain it all, but I’m quite lazy.

The Liquidator #2: Contract For A Killing

The Liquidator #2: Contract For A Killing, by R.L. Brent

No month stated, 1974  Award Books

So with this second volume of The Liquidator I’m prepared to claim that this series is the Parker of the ‘70s. I know, the Parker series itself was being published in the ‘70s, but you know what I mean. Maybe we could say it’s the men’s adventure equivalent of Parker: more action-driven, with more sex and violence, but retaining that tough, crime-pulp vibe, with quality writing and a host of memorable one-off characters. I’m sorry I let these books sit around so long and didn’t start reading the series sooner. 

I still question the authorship: I mean Larry Powell, supposedly “R.L. Brent,” is also supposedly the guy who wrote Donovan’s Devils, and the first volume of that series was so boring I still haven’t moved on to the second one. The Liquidator comes from an entirely different universe; it’s certainly one of the better-written men’s adventure series of the day, but not in a “literary” sense a la Jon Messmann or Marc Olden. Whereas those authors could get a litle too bogged down in interior dialog or philosophical musings, “Brent” keeps things moving with a lean and mean prose style that still manages to convey depth of characterization. The series really has the vibe of a ‘70s action film, one of those gritty urban action deals that would’ve had a wah-wah guitar and Afro-Cuban percussion-heavy score by Lalo Schifrin. 

These series books were pretty much under the radar, not getting the industry coverage of hardcovers or even standalone paperback originals. But reviewers of the day noticed that The Liquidator was better than the standard offering; just like the first volume, this time we are presented with a few industry reviews touting the book. Indeed, no less than Publisher’s Weekly praised The Liquidator, according to the blurb on the first page: “It’s refreshing to find a hero as interested in sex as bloodletting.” Now there’s a reviewer after my own heart! And that’s certainly true in Contract For A Killing; hero Jake Brand is no prude and, like too many of his “business first” men’s adventure brethren, doesn’t turn down the willing women who come his way. 

Speaking of which, this volume opens with Jake (as the author refers to him) indulging in some of those perks, courtesy Gwen, the babe he picked up at the end of the first volume. They’re in Virginia, laying low, and Jake’s recuperating from his wounds – while also engaging Gwen in some good lovin.’ Jake’s vengeance on the mob still hasn’t been sated, and also there’s still the dangling subplot about the guy who framed him and got him sent to prison for five years. This guy, a professional assassin who goes by many names, looks enough like Jake that he was able to get Jake framed for some murders Jake himself didn’t commit. One of the names the assassin goes by is Richard Stuart, which is the name Brent uses for him in the first half of Contract For A Killing. 

Brent actually has a lot of subplots in play, and unlike a lot of series it doesn’t come off like page-filling even when we cut over to one-off characters. The series has also clearly been written as a series, if you catch my drift, and not just a bunch of standalones. There are still dangling subplots even at the end of this volume, which leads me to conclude that reading the entirety of The Liquidator could be an enjoyable experience. I certainly enjoyed this volume. The author definitely has his pulp skills intact, for as expected Jake is uncovered, leading to a nice chase sequence. Once he’s sent Gwen off to safety, our hero gets back on the path to revenge, armed only with a .45 and a .38. Unlike other mob-busters of the ‘70s, Jake doesn’t tote around an arsenal, or at least he doesn’t in these earliest books. But this does not detract from the action; the author does a great job of juggling plot development with frequent action sequences. 

Another cool gimmick of the series is that Jake Brand doesn’t have access to limitless funds, like Mack Bolan or Philip Magellan do. He has to stretch his few remaining dollars, and isn’t above snatching up a hundred dollar bill someone insultingly drops in front of him. This gives these novels a bit more of a realistic vibe. Nothing too realistic, but still…it’s not like Bolan, who will routinely loot the Mafia of hundreds of thousands of dollars, to the point that he can just give the “blood money” away. Jake’s mind is often on his wallet and how little money he has to fund his vengeance quest. This lack of funds also has unintentional consequences, in that it puts the mob on his tail. One interesting development in this regard is that Jake hawks the sportscar Gwen lifted at the end of the first volume, buying a less-obvious car, and of course the shady car dealer has mob ties and starts to suspect who Jake might be. 

The Parker vibe for me comes with how Jake works his way through the underworld in search of his prey, meeting a host of oddball characters. First is a guy named Grail, who acts as the agent for Richard Stuart. Grail’s a muscle-bound man of wealth who lives in opulence; blind, he relies on a hotstuff Chinese babe named Anita as his assistant…and bodyguard. This Jake learns the hard way when he tries to lean too strongly on Grail: “The lady knew Kung-Fu, and she knew it very well.” This is a tense scene that takes place in the pitch-dark room, Jake constantly scrabbling around for his dropped gun while the lady and Grail take turns kicking his ass. Another cool thing about The Liquidator is that Jake Brand, despite being all kinds of tough, is not a superhuman a la Mack Bolan. He often makes mistakes, like his penchant for barging into places with little in the way of an exit strategy. 

There’s also a good deal of ‘70s-mandatory lurid stuff; in some sequences dealing with Richard Stuart, the professional assassin, we learn he’s a sadist who enjoys beating around hookers before screwing them. (“It was like raping a woman who had finally given in.”) There’s also a part where another female character is tortured and raped (mostly off-page) for info by a group of Mafia thugs. What’s curious is that another minor character – an independent contractor who tries to cash in on the bounty on Jake Brand’s head – comes acrosss this woman after her torture-rape and offers to help her, but nothing more is mentioned of it this volume. Given that our author has a knack for continuity, I’m wondering if this female character will return in a later volume. 

But the naughty stuff isn’t all grimy; as stated Jake Brand gets his share of tail. This is demonstrated by another memorable one-off character: The Countess, a “full-breasted, narrow-waisted, and long legged” platinum blonde beauty Jake encounters soon after arriving in New Orleans. Jake’s come here due to a lead from Grail; Richard Stuart, per Grail, has been contracted to murder an up-and-coming singer named Angela who lives in New Orleans. This subplot ultimately detracts from Jake’s own story of revenge; Brent clearly is trying to develop an ongoing series here, and apparently doesn’t feel he can do so by focusing solely on Jake’s quest. So to compensate he turns Jake into the traditional role of hero, and thus he serves in this capacity to Angela, a woman he doesn’t even know – trying to find her, trying to protect her from being killed by Stuart. While this does make Jake seem more heroic, it also takes away from his own story. But then his goal, as Brent often reminds us, is to kill two birds with one stone: keep an innocent woman from being killed, and catch the man who plans to kill her – the same man who jacked-up Jake’s own life. 

Well anyway, the Countess is a former madam (despite only being in her early 30s) who now lives in a mini-fortress, a pair of muscle-bound black men serving as her henchmen. Jake’s gotten word that Angela, who has gone to ground, might once have been one of the Countess’s girls. Per men’s adventure tradition, not only does he get the required info from the beautiful lady, but he also gets laid. Another fairly explicit scene unfolds; nothing too risque, but at least it doesn’t fade to black. We do learn that even an experienced former madam can be impressed by our hero. Through the Countess Jake learns that Angela is shacked up with a wealthy oil man named Lassiter, and in fact is hiding out on Lassiter’s yacht. A recurring mystery though is why anyone wants her dead; Angela once sang at a nightclub run by the mob, and was given her start by a mobster, but the Mafia is more interested in getting her back because she brought in customers. 

Angela, who turns out to be a stacked brunette beauty, has her share of secrets, and also she doesn’t seem very willing to accept Jake’s assistance. But his word is soon proven accurate when Richard Stuart makes his move to take Angela’s life. This is another cool scene in which Jake and the assassin initially pass by one another on a dock, Jake belatedly realizing that he just walked by the man he’s been hunting. Jake is hurt in the ensuing scene, but he recuperates thanks to some more good lovin,’ this courtesy his third “conquest” in the novel: Elena, the hot daughter of Martinez, a Cuban expat who moved to New Orleans after the Bay of Pigs fiasco. This conjugation, per Elena, was “inevitable” from the moment they met, and next thing you know Jake’s “[sliding] into the pulsing warmth between her thighs.” The Liquidator, baby! 

The finale has Jake taking on the local mob forces of Don Valante and also figuring out who was really behind the hit on Angela. He gets a boost in the armament department thanks to Martinez, who like any anti-Castroist living in the US has a full stock of weapons at his disposal. One thing I haven’t mentioned yet is that, while Contract For A Killing is certainly violent, Brent doesn’t dwell on the gore. Again, the book is very much in line with the era’s mainstream crime fiction, only with a bit more of a pulp bent. And as mentioned there are sufficient plot threads dangling at novel’s end, with Jake’s vengeance still unsated, so I certainly look forward to reading the next volume.

The Liquidator #1

The Liquidator #1, by R.L. Brent 

No Month Stated, 1974 Award Books 

I’ve been meaning to get to this series for a while, but I have to admit I’m a little bummed that it isn’t about a dude who helps retail stores “liquidate” their unsold merchandise. Instead, The Liquidator mines the same territory as The Lone Wolf and Stryker, only without the surreal edge of the former or the arbitrary backstory-dumping of the latter: it’s about a tough cop who is framed for getting too close to the mob, and ultimately takes the law into his own hands to dish out a little bloody justice. Writing-wise it’s superior to either of those series, “R.L. Brent” going for a terse, almost hardboiled tone that comes off like “Fawcett Gold Medal for the ‘70s.” 

This then makes who “Brent” really was pretty surprising: according to James Reasoner, it was Larry Powell, who also for Award wrote the Donovan’s Devils series. I remember absolutely nothing about the first volume of that series, other than that it was boring and padded to the extreme. Such is not the case of The Liquidator #1, so either the same writer did not in fact write both series – for what it’s worth, Hawk’s Authors Pseudonyms credits Robert Turner for Donavan’s Devils – or Powell’s heart was just more into The Liquidator, and the writing displayed that. (Let’s just assume that sentence made sense.) I went into this one not expecting much, and found myself greatly entertained; it was a fast-moving tale with little fat, a good plot, and strong characters. Another thing I dug was tht Powell (or whoever) clearly wrote it as the start of a series, with several subplots still dangling by novel’s end. 

Another interesting gimmick is that The Liquidator appears to take place in the “future” of 1978 – which, curiously, is the year the fifth and final volume was published, a few years after the previous four had been. Granted, this gimmick isn’t even mentioned and is only inferred from the narrative: when hero Jake Brand, the tough Miami cop who stars in the series, is arrested midway through the novel, we’re informed that it’s the biggest thing to happen in Miami “since the Dolphins won the Super Bowl.” This would place the action in 1973, which according to usually-reliable Wikipedia is the first time the Dolphins won the Super Bowl. This would also coincide with the time Powell was likely writing the manuscript, as it’s my understanding it took these books about a year to get into print from the time of manuscript submission to the publisher. Well anyway, Brand spends five years in prison…meaning it’s 1978 when he’s released, if we’re to take that Super Bowl reference literally. 

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Brand when we meet him is a former football player who now works as a cop in Miami; he has a grudge to bear on the Mob, particularly local creep Leo Hester. Brand’s dad was a beat cop, and was killed by a junkie when Brand was a teenager. Brand’s older brother went to law school as a result of that, imploring Brand to pursue the football career their dad wanted for him. But then Brand’s brother was killed, too – while trying to bring down Hester’s racket. Upon this Brand dropped out of football and joined the force, and now in his late 20s he’s been successful in derailing Hester’s pipeline. Powell doesn’t waste our time with a lot of “realistic cop stuff;” within the first few pages Brand’s blowing away a pair of drug dealers, with little concern over rules and regulations. 

Brand isn’t so sharp, though; his contact is a stripper at one of Hester’s dives, and early in the book one of Hester’s stooges catches Brand and the girl meeting. Brand tries to rough up the stooge, claiming he has the hots for the stripper and all, but it’s clear he’s been made…not that our hero realizes this. Instead he goes back to bang his hot girlfriend, Diana, whom we’re often reminded is way out of Brand’s league; he constantly wonders what she sees in him. I mean Brand as presented is six-plus feet of pure musclebound stud, but at the same time he’s a cop with a cop’s pay, and Diana is high-class stuff. Again, this too should set off Brand’s sixth sense. Also it would help if he, like us readers, could consult the back cover, as the copy there completely blows the surprise that Diana will sell him out. 

This happens in a memorable moment about a quarter of the way through the book. Brand’s already taken down so much of Hester’s setup that the Mob executive board, run by Mr. Orsini in New York, plots to take him out of the picture. Rather than just kill him, which Orsini thinks is the better option, Orsini’s “slick” lawyer Cordetti devises a “cute” scheme to frame Brand: a lookalike (who remains off-page the entire narrative) is hired to blow away a minor cog in Hester’s pipeline, making it look that Brand has finally taken the law into his own hands. This, uh, “brands” him as a dirty cop in the eyes of his fellow cops – especially when Diana lies that Brand was not with her all night. Indeed, she further fibs that Brand admitted to killing this guy, asking her to keep quiet about it and cover for him. All this is relayed to the cops in her bedroom, the cops coming to arrest Brand at three in the morning; meanwhile in reality, Brand has been in bed with her all night. 

Quick sleaze quotient note: Powell is not one to much exploit the sexual tomfoolery, with nothing here approaching say Harold Robbins levels. But on the other hand, you definitely know some hanky-panky is underway, with occasional mentions of “deep thrusts” and the like. As for the violence, that too isn’t much played up, with no copious descriptions of exploding faces or fountains of gore. And in fact, Brand kills relatively few opponents, at least when compared to his men’s adventure comrades. He blows away a couple guys, usually using pistols, and Powell never dwells on the carnage. Even a hardcore bit where Brand fixes a guy’s shotgun – jamming up the barrels with shards of soap – is handled conservatively, with the ensuing face-blowing-offery of the jammed shotgun happening off-page. 

Brand’s time in prison is compactly conveyed over a few chapters; this is by no means a “prison novel.” After a few attempts are made on his life due to his ex-cop nature making him a top target, a black acquaintance outside sets up a group of “brothers” to serve as his guardians – a subplot that could’ve been more elaborated upon. Even behind bars Brand proves his heroism, first foiling an attempted prison break and later saving a doctor from a raging psycopath. This final act results in the warden making a call to the governor and getting Brand’s sentence commuted. All told, Brand “only” spends five years in prison, and when he gets out he immediately sets upon his plan to dish out a little payback to Leo Hester and the mob. In particular he has a score to settle, given that he’s found out his stripper informant was gang-raped and murdered by Hester’s thugs, courtesy an icepick to the spine. 

Brand understands that he can never be a cop again; even though he’s innocent, he is forever tainted as a dirty cop. But this is no big deal; it’s the ‘70s, and practically everyone is taking the law into their own hands to fight the Mob (at least according to the proliferation of similarly-plotted men’s adventure novels on the racks). He even comes up with the “Liquidator” title at the very end of the book, though otherwise he doesn’t have any fancy gimmicks or calling cards. And so far as guns and stuff go, he just uses a revolver and whatever else he picks up along the way, like a silencer-equipped .45. Initially he doles out revenge in fitting methods, like icepicking the thug who icepicked the stripper informant. There also follows the memorable bit where Brand sabotages another thug’s shotgun. 

But still, the vibe, at least to me, is like something from Gold Medal in the ‘50s. Like when Brand starts staking out Hester’s beach house, and spies his hotbod brunette mistress sunning on the beach – topless, of course. She catches him and rushes over to confront him, catching Brand off-guard. Turns out she’s been instructed by Hester to tell Brand that the mobster wants to talk, and also that she, the mistress, is Brand’s for the taking – she looks forward to it, having never been with a guy who has been celibate for five years. Surprisingly Brand doesn’t take the bait, and instead has her call Hester to set up a meet. The girl is named Gwen, and Powell gives her a memorable personality; she certainly doesn’t consider herself some cheap whore, and promises Brand that she’s super-skilled in the sack. At length our hero of course relents, but as mentioned Powell isn’t one for the sleazy details: “She gasped when he made the deep stroke” and the like being the extent of it. And it must be some deep stroke, as Gwen isn’t eager to let Brand go afterwards, insisting that their time together “meant something” to her. 

The meet with Hester is also pretty cool; the portly mobster swears it was the higher-ups who framed Brand, and further offers Brand enough info to get started on his mob-busting. Hester’s no fan of Brand’s, but figures he can kill the proverbial two birds: take out some competition in the mob, and along the way Brand might get himself killed. Hester tells Brand about the frame, who was behind it, and also where Diana has disappeared to. Curiously though at this point the book takes a slight detour; Brand’s also been informed of a new mob computer setup in Virginia, and goes about a lengthy plan to bring it down. But even here there’s more characterization than you’d expect, from the proto-computer geek who turns out to really be the boss of the operation to the shrewish lady who ends up helping Brand. Here Brand gets more info on the mob, and more importantly does more damage to them, but at the same time it detracts from the revenge scenario. 

The finale also takes an unexpected direction; Diana is in the suburbs of Maryland, where she’s married to a wealthy plastic surgeon who runs a fortified clinic. Brand basically just walks in the place and asks for Diana! This turns out to be his entire plan. He’s drugged, surrounded, and wakes up on a hospital bed; he was hit so hard the doctor actually gave him stitches. Diana returns to the narrative here, and again the plot goes in an unexpected direction, with Brand getting lucky and suffering a loss in quick succession. In the ensuing gunfight Brand also winds up taking out the guy who killed his brother, without even realizing it (though he’s informed so later). Powell pulls an interesting trick here with Brand being saved by women twice in the finale; first Diana gives him a gun no one knows she has, then after the climactic firefight (in which Hester is almost casually dispensed with), Gwen shows up and escorts Brand to safety. 

Gwen is actually still with Brand at novel’s end, but I doubt we’ll see her next volume. These ‘70s mob-busters were pretty much swingers. Anyway, I enjoyed The Liquidator #1 more than I thought I would, and I’m glad I picked up the rest of the series several years ago. FYI the last one, The Exchange, which as mentioned came out a few years after the others, appears to be the hardest one to track down. It was also published by Charter, which might be one reason it came out in ’78 while the others were in ’74; maybe publication was delayed when Charter took over Award’s books.