This was like an entire book of supporting characters and b-plots that were supposed to go into a better book. ( )

I really liked the story but I didn't like the ending. ( )

I read Elmore Leonard's Get Shorty a couple of years ago and enjoyed it, enough so that I'd been meaning to read more of his stuff ever since. So when I found a bunch of his books at a library sale recently, I snapped them up and started with this one pretty much at random. Unfortunately, I think it was probably not the best choice.

The plot has a lot of potential, featuring several people doing dumb criminal things that intersect in interesting ways, with a dollop of Florida weird for good measure. But I just really couldn't get into it as much as I expected to, I think mostly because I just didn't find any of the characters in any way interesting.

Note that I don't say that I didn't find the characters "likeable." That's kind of a given for most of them. They're terrible people. The titular Bob, Judge Bob "Big" Gibbs, is particularly terrible. He's sexist and racist, he harasses women and abuses his power and is just generally The Worst. Which isn't in itself a complaint. I mean, he's not meant to be a good guy. But fifty pages in, I was starting to feel like I'd been doing nothing but wading nonstop through sleaze and just wanted a shower for my brain. Which wasn't super pleasant, although it would have been worth it if Bob, or any of the other characters, were entertaining or complex or funny or something. Well, there are hints of a droll sense of humor, but it never feels like it quite comes into focus. And the characters who aren't criminals or corrupt judges, including the probation officer who is the closest thing the novel has to a good guy, have absolutely no personalities at all.

In the end... I didn't hate it, or anything. I really do think there's a fun story making up the novel's skeleton. But I think my main experience of it is that I just kept only seeing glimpses of the much better book it could have been. ( )

"Maximum Bob" is the story of a crackpot cracker judge in Palm Beach County, Florida, who resembles the actor Harry Dean Stanton and who acts like the Hanging Magistrate, Roy Bean. He is saddled with a space-cadet wife named Leanne, who comes complete with a second personality, a 12-year-old black girl named Wanda Grace, with a Butterfly McQueen voice, who lived 135 years ago; the judge is dying to get rid of both of them. And there are more than a few uglies on the prowl who are partial toward seeing Circuit Court Judge Bob Isom Gibbs become bloated gator gruel in the 'Glades. Maximum Bob's appellation comes, of course, from his habit of hitting an offender with the full sentence provided by law.

Richard Poe does a fantastic job of narrating the audiobook, and he probably makes the story better than it actually is. An uneasy mix of comedy and violence, one does have to admire Maximum Bob for his attitude at least, if not his uprightness. Parole Officer Kathy Baker is the center of the story more than the judge, but that part of the story is more cookie cutter. I originally gave this a higher rating, but the more I think about it, the more it is clear that Leonard really didn't put in the time and effort to tell a good story here. It goes way off track about halfway through, and it leaves too many loose ends. Thinking about it critically, I have to wonder what the point of the story is at all? ( )