Customer Reviews

Maximum Bob (Spec ed.)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

Having read 10 or so of EL's books previously, I had a pretty good idea of what to expect from this one. And it has many of the same elements which make his books so enjoyable. At the same time, there are a number of distractions which make this read a little less enjoyable than others.

Leanne, Bob's wife, doesn't contribute a lot to the story, and to me, seems to detract from it. Also, maybe most noteworthy is the slowness with which the main characters act. I won't blame it on Kathy, who isn't really in a position to enforce the law, but instead on Gary, who is a strangely lethargic Leonard character. Slow to get a haircut, slow to investigate, slow to draw ...

Despite these minor details, it's interesting to see where Kathy might show up in the future. She's sharp. I wouldn't recommend this as "the" Leonard book to read, but it's still well worth spending a day on and a lot of fun, as EL is always. What's better? Bandits, Get Shorty, among others, in my opinion.

This may be a lacklustre effort from Leonard, but lacklustre from him is damn good for anyone else. It might be the surreal elements in this one, which don't play out quite so well, and also Bob himself is not a very rounded character despite being in the title. It's not a bad book by any means, but if you're looking for a Leonard to book to start off with, choose The Switch or Swag. This is better enjoyed once you know the master's style. Recommended, but not his best.

After watching the TV series on ABC, I expected MAXIMUM BOB to be a very funny and very off beat dark comedy. Instead i found a rather slow moving and predicatable crime drama that didn't quite hit the funny bone like i was told it would. Perhaps my expectations were to high. Despite that, the general plot and characters were good enough to keep me going. Unless you are already an Elmore fan, I don't recomend this book. It may give you a bad idea of what this normally creative author has to offer. Trust me, he is usually better.

Although Leonard bestowed this book with a great title and two of his more memorable characters, he does none of them justice in this rather aimless story. Like much of his work, this is a quick-moving piece set in South Florida, and features a full parade of small-time criminals, cops, one or two truly nasty folks, and a wide array of curious characters who spout crackling dialogue. The catalyst for the action is hanging judge "Maximum" Bob Gibbs (who is said to resemble Harry Dean Stanton), a racist, sexist, philandering, cracker, caricature of a fella' who doesn't mind speaking his mind. Of course, this gets people mad at him, most notably recent sentencee Dale Crowe Jr. and his ex-con Uncle Elvin, recently returned from 15 years for killing a man. They plot to off him, with the assistance of a drug-addled doctor under house arrest, and his mincing "houseboy." All these folks are also in the orbit of the real protagonist, parole officer Kathy Baker and her love interest, cop Gary. Kathy is one of most engaging of Leonard's female leads, but her job sort of restricts her ability to influence events. So, enter Gary, a cool, low key hero type, who has the power to move events along, but also somehow manages to bore one to death. It all meanders along in Leonard's typical farcical fashion until a somewhat discordant murder or two heralds the beginning of the end. It's a rather mundane and anticlimactic conclusion for a Leonard novel, and one wonders if he just got bored by it. Another weakness is the judge's wife, a new-agey type who is sometimes possessed by the spirit of a young black slave girl, but whose interludes serve only to break the flow of things. There's also the houseboy, Hector, whose oddity is mentioned repeatedly by several characters, but never explained or explored. It's not awful, but it's not as crisp as most of his work, hopefully he'll bring Kathy back for a more fully realized adventure in the future.

Maximum Bob's a frightening Judge to end up with if you're a defense attorney. An old fashioned hanging judge, he makes State's Attorneys relax, police witnesses calm down, and defendants shiver. He's also kind a promiscuous man, chasing women with utter disregard for the EEOC and HR. Along comes Kathy Baker, a DOC (Department of Corrections) Probation Officer. She's like many of the Leonard heroines, attractive, gritty and while not amoral clearly someone willing to go all the way to get her man. This is excellent news for Sergeant Gary Hammond, one of the good guys. The bad news for Elvin Crowe and his nephew Dale, two lifetime, recidivist convicts, is that she also means them.

The alligator, Dickey Campeau, Leanne, Earlene, Dr. Tommy, Wesley and Hector all add to the United Nations mish-mash of dysfunction, crime, love and humor.

The dialogue, always a Leonard strong suit, gets better and better. Unfortunately, the plot seems unfocused. It takes a long time to get up a head of steam. We keep floundering around the set-up. What's Elvin going to do? What's Gary going to do? Is Leanne coming home? Is there a second alligator? But then it speeds up and we are led to believe that now, finally, the thrilling climax . . . . only to discover that it slows down . . .to speed up. Tedious. And a lot of unanswered issues and characters.

That's why they give awards to film editing. There was none here.

Good for the charcters and the dialogue; poor for the story and the finale. Larry Scantlebury

There are few enough decent television series these days for us to be able to let a good one slip away. Unfortunately, the TV version of Maximum Bob, starring Beau Bridges, lasted only a few short weeks. Unfortunate because in this book Elmore Leonard introduces an interesting cast of characters, Kathy Baker, one of his rare female leads, is okay, but Bob "Maximum Bob" Gibbs, a notoriously lecherous and racist judge prone to harsh sentences, and Leanne, the judge's wife, former mermaid at the Weeki Wachee aqua bar, who--since a close encounter with an alligator--has developed a psychic link with a twelve year old slave girl, are both terrific.

These characters, and a copious serving of lowlifes, combine with Leonard's trademark dialogue to make for a colorful story. However, the plot just kind of meanders towards a conclusion and the prodigious final body count seems to reflect the author's desire to end the tale rather than any necessary mechanics of the plot.

Television, which is almost totally character and dialogue driven, and where lack of a coherent plot is to be expected, was an ideal medium for this collection of oddballs. Alas, the show disappeared quickly and though several folks in this intermittently amusing novel are memorable, it doesn't rank among Elmore Leonard's best efforts.

GRADE : B-

Maximum Bob is the nickname given to Judge Bob Gibbs. Judge Gibbs is known for handing out hard sentences from the bench. Dale Crowe Junior has the misfortune to draw Maximum Bob. Dale gets five years and threatens the judge. His probation officer Kathy Baker has her hands full. She is trying to fend off the advances of Judge Gibbs, keep Dale in line, and deal with Dale's uncle Elvin. Things get complicated when an attempt is made on the Judge's life. Now the list of suspects long, and Kathy seems to have a number of them among her parolees.

Maximum Bob is a fun book in that great Leonard style. There are the usual lowlifes populating the pages of the book. Readers of the Raylan Givens stories fans of the FX series Justified will recognize the relatives of Dewey Crowe, everyone's favorite redneck moron. Something I have grown to love about Leonard's novels and stories is how they are often linked with each other. Dale Junior is mentioned in "Fire In The Hole," Judge Gibbs is the judge who sentenced Jack Foley to prison in Road Dogs. There is even a scene in the book where one of the characters is recalling a western novel that he read in prison. The unnamed novel is Leonard's Bounty Hunters. These little Easter Eggs are quite fun for the loyal Leonard readers.