Maximum Bob

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385301421 ISBN 13: 9780385301428

Publisher: Delacorte Press, 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.

From the Publisher:

Skirt-chasing, orchid-raising Florida judge "Maximum" Bob Gibbs has made a career of oversentencing convicted felons. He's thrown the book at so many that it's beginning to look like one of them may be planning to throw it back at him. But assassination isn't the worst of the judge's problems. He's got to get his whacked-out wife Leanne out of Palm Beach--fast. For it seems she's becoming an embarrassment, what with her multiple personalities and all. So when Bob starts playing footsie with an alligator poacher in a scam to scare his wife into divorce, and a pretty probation officer named Kathy Diaz Baker catches his lecherous eye, things really start to heat up in south Florida...as bullets start flying, a gator comes crawling, and a lovely lady finds herself in a cross fire of smart crooks, foolish love, and sweet revenge.

From the Back Cover:

Hard-ass Palm Beach County judge Bob Isom Gibbs enjoys sending even petty offenders away to do hard time -- which has made the list of miscreants who want him dead longer than a fully grown Florida gator's tail. And a good number of his illwishers are probation officer Kathy Baker's clients, including young Dale Crowe and his psycho uncle Elvin. Now, Kathy's got an even more daunting task than keeping BIG's horny hands off her: keeping "Maximum Bob" alive. Because Gibbs's many enemies seem to be willing to go to any lengths -- be it death by amphibian or some more tried-and-true method -- to permanently end the career of an oversexed, racist jurist who's more interested in scoring than in saving his own red neck.