Leonard’s `Maximum Bob’ crime fiction at its best

MAXIMUM BOB, by Elmore Leonard, Delacorte Press, 295 pages, $20.

Mastering the skill of believable dialogue in fiction often can be the writer’s most difficult task. Many have tried and failed — even a few of the great ones.

Reading conversation can be troublesome if the author struggles to make the intercourse truly realistic.

Some of my personal favorites, who happen to specialize in witty, real-life repartee, are Stephen King, Lawrence Sanders, Robert Parker and Elmore Leonard.

Elmore Leonard? That’s right. Elmore Leonard.

Here’s a guy who has made big bucks from the adaptation of his crime novels to the silver screen, but the truest pleasure of an Elmore Leonard novel still may be derived from reading the story for what it is and basking in the glow of an author who can recreate day-to-day life through conversation.

Leonard has written 29 of these beauties, and his latest effort, “Maximum Bob,” does little to diminish his status as America’s greatest writer of crime fiction.

The setting for this one is Palm Beach County, Fla., not an unfamiliar clime to Leonard fans, and a place where sociopaths and malcontents seem to breed as abundantly as the alligators that frequent this story.

Leonard’s hero breaks tradition from his usual style, in that Kathy Baker, a keen-witted, fiesty probation officer, runs amok of the underworld’s seedy side in Florida — a marked contrast to the author’s normal course of having his readers view crime from the inside looking out.

The story centers on a judge who rules with an iron fist — Maximum Bob Gibbs, known for giving the maximum penalty for the minimum crime. Gibbs epito- mizes the leader of the good-old-boy network in the deep South.

Leonard involves young Baker in a deadly game of chasing convicts and ex-convicts in search of a suspected assassin. But he twists and turns the plot line delightfully to keep the readers at bay, all the while overwhelming us at every turn of the page with potential killers and victims.

Considered by most observers to be the master of the crime genre, Elmore Leonard again has penned a thriller.

“Maximum Bob” soon will rank up there on the crime fiction ladder with “Stick,” “52 Pick-up” and “Killshot.” Fans of this type of writing will want to add Leonard’s latest to their long list of favorites.

Ron Brown is a free-lance writer who resides in Bangor.