Maximum Bob [Hardcover]

Elmore Leonard (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 1991

Enter the world of Elmore Leonard. The setting is Palm Beach County, Florida, where someone places a live ten-foot alligator in the backyard of the bigoted, redneck judge Bob Gibbs--known to all as Maximum Bob--and his wife, Leanne, a former Weeki Wachee mermaid. Not long after that, shots are fired into the judge's house. It doesn't take much figuring to conclude that someone's out to get him and that malefactor isn't going to stop at the second try. There's a long list of suspects: Dale Crowe, who just got an outrageous sentence for a minor crime; his uncle Elvin, a killer on parole, raring to go again; Dr. Tommy Vasco, the drugged out former medical doctor; his equally bizarre friend, Hector; and Dicky Campau, who makes a living poaching alligators. And there are others.



Somehow Kathy Baker, a nifty young probation officer, has got herself in the middle of all this. She's got to avoid two seducers--the judge and a homicidal maniac--and work with a young police officer who interests her for more than professional reasons. Trying to pick out from his assortment of bad guys, sociopaths, and punks the one who's trying to kill the judge is pure entertainment, as only Elmore Leonard, with his ear for the sound and eye for the sight of lowlife, can provide.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Darker than his usual fare (something very bad occurs to a good guy), Leonard's ( Get Shorty ) latest is no less excellent. Elvin Crowe, of a habitually criminal Florida family, is out of jail and looking to run a scam on rich probationer Dr. Tommy Vasco, ex-friend (lover?) of Elvin's prison boyfriend. Turns out that all three were sentenced by illiberal Palm Beach County judge Bob Isom Gibbs, aka Maximum Bob. For $10,000 Elvin contracts to kill Gibbs, wondering if he can get more out of Dr. Tommy. Meanwhile Gibbs is trying to scare off his weird young wife, Leanne, a possible psychic sharing a body with Wanda Grace, a dead slave girl. Racist and sexist as any redneck, Gibbs has eyes for young Kathy Diaz Baker, probation officer for Elvin, Elvin's nephew and eventually Dr. Tommy. Still angry about a failed marriage to an Anglo cad, Kathy meets youngish detective Gary Hammond. They start working together (Who brought a gator to Gibbs's house? Who shot at the house? What's Elvin up to with Dr. Tommy?) and fall in love. Leonard's suspense, pace, humor and ear (probation officers talking shop, e.g.) are as wonderful, dry and true as ever. Major ad/promo; Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club featured alternates; author tour.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

From Kirkus Reviews

Leonard returns to the Florida coastline for his weakest novel since Touch (1987)--a bumpily humorous but unfocused seriofarce about a probation officer and the eccentric judge she gets entangled with. As one of Leonard's very few heroines in 29 novels, spunky Kathy Baker of the Florida Dept. of Corrections blows a whiff of fresh air into the Leonard canon--as does the outspoken, aging hanging-judge Bob Gibbs--but not enough to put the spring into a slack plot that begins when skirt-chasing Gibbs takes a fancy to Kathy as she shows up in his courtroom with probation-violator Dale Crowe Junior. Gibbs throws the book at Dale, then asks former psychology-major Kathy out on a date under the guise of her talking to his wife, a former showgirl who seems to be possessed by the spirit of a 12-year-old 18th-century slave girl. Before Kathy can visit Gibbs, however, a hugh alligator appears on his property and sends his wife scurrying for northern climes. And that's just fine by Gibbs, who turns out to have imported the gator to get rid of his loony wife. But when Gibbs double-deals Dickey Campau, who brought the gator, Campau drives out to the judge's home and shoots up the house. Which is just as well, because the shots scare off Elvin Crowe, Dale's mean and flaky uncle, who's been hired by another of the judge's irate courtroom-victims, a crack-addicted M.D., to kill the judge. Caught up in the investigation into the gator-attack and shooting, Kathy matches up professionally and romantically with cool cop Gary Hammond--until a jarring note of raw violence takes out Gary and sets Kathy up for an anticlimactic confrontation with Elvin and the M.D. Nicely realized characters, the usual smart Leonard dialogue, a few moments of brisk high/low humor--but the meandering plot lacks drive, Gibbs rolls around like a loose wheel, and the whole affair seems more like a pale Carl Hiaasen imitation than true-blue Leonard: It's all a big disappointment after Leonard's crackling last, Get Shorty (1990). -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 295 pages
• Publisher: Delacorte Press; 1St Edition edition (July 1, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385301421
• ISBN-13: 978-0385301428
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #965,255 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Elmore Leonard has written more than forty novels, including bestsellers Up in Honey's Room, The Hot Kid, Mr. Paradise, Tishomingo Blues, Pagan Babies, and Glitz. Many of his books have been made into movies, including Get Shorty and Out of Sight. He lives with his wife, Christine, in Bloomfield Village, Michigan.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Enjoyable Book, July 9, 2002

By 

Untouchable (Sydney, NSW Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Maximum Bob (Paperback)

Judge Bob Gibbs takes his job seriously. So much so that he tends to mete out the maximum punishment possible to offenders brought before him, earning him the nickname "Maximum Bob".

The book's protagonist is Kathy Baker who works as a probation officer which puts her in occasional contact with Judge Gibbs. It seems that Judge Gibbs takes a liking to her, so much so that he comes up with a very imaginative way to remove his wife from the picture to leave him free to pursue Kathy. What has escaped the lust-filled judge's attention is that his affection is not being returned.

As a probation officer, her job also puts Kathy in contact with criminals and this is where the third main character is introduced. Elvin Crowe is a mean piece of work who has recently been released from prison and it's obvious the rehabilitation didn't stick. Elvin somehow comes across someone who is willing to pay him to kill Judge Gibbs, who just happened to be the presiding judge during Elvin's case in which he drew...yep, that's right, the maximum penalty.

It was hard to decide how to treat this book. While it contains quite a few scenes that border on the farcical thanks to some offbeat characterisations, there is also the ever-present undertone of menace tinged with despair. What kept wrenching me back whenever I began losing myself in the book's humour was the realisation that lives were constantly in danger.

Maximum Bob is an enjoyable book exposing us to Florida complete with heat, psychos, druggies and alligators.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Leonard scrapes the bottom rung of society yet again, March 9, 2005

By 

Christopher Moyer "moyer.privatjokr.com" (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Maximum Bob (Mass Market Paperback)

Judge Bob Gibbs, or, as his friends call him, "Big," is known for handing out the maximum sentence for even the pettiest of crimes. Kathy Baker is a probation officer who runs into the hard-nosed judge while working on the case of Dale Crowe, a punk kid who can't keep out of trouble. Gibbs has always had girls on the side since his wife has become more and more distant over the years, and is interested in Kathy from the get-go.

A live alligator ends up in Gibbs's yard one day, prompting a police investigation, with any number of suspects, including Dale Crowe's mischievous uncle Elvin, who was sent to prison by Maximum Bob, and just recently released. Along the way, we run into a whole cast of colorful Floridian characters from the seedier side, including an unlicensed dermatologist and his Cuban houseboy - both mischievous in their own ways.

Elmore Leonard has a keen ear for dialogue and, in my opinion, is second to none in today's crime fiction writing. His characters are society's outcasts: criminals who can't stay out of trouble because they are just too stupid. But he treats them with full attention, and they never act out of character; everyone's got their motives, it's just a matter of who can outfox the others by being less incompetent.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars minimum book ?, March 30, 2010

By 

David Van Elslande (Belgium) - See all my reviews

My 2nd step into Elmore's world (the 1st one was Tarantino's adaptation of Jackie Brown a.k.a. Punch Creole) and it somehow felt like I already had been here before.
Just like QT's movie, it is full of witty dialogues, crazy&stupid bad guys facing heroes that are so "Johndoesque" it is almost boring...and that's the main issue about this book : characters lack of density, there's the good ones and the bad ones and a clear line between both - but it doesn't do much good to the novel. As a fan of James Ellroy I miss the "dostoievskian" approach to crime he develops in his novels, I missed his epic, bigger than life plots ; EL seems to dwell in writing Cats and Dogs stories mixed with a pinch of love story and a spoonful of craziness, a cocktail many people seem to enjoy...I don't.
It's inventive, dialogues are witty, easy to read (you can skip any page of the book, you won't get lost in here) but not much more than that.