Maximum Bob [Audio Cassette]

Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Chivers Audio Books
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560549041
• ISBN-13: 978-1560549048
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)

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

6 of 6 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.