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.