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.