i’ve been trying to decide what my favourite marenghi-ism is from the book and it’s probably what follows the part where the villain decides to eat some rancid crab meat in a eucharist type ceremony
Somewhere he heard a faint whispering, an inner voice that spoke long-forgotten words in a wicked blasphemy. ‘Take, eat, for this is my body …’
No!
Yes! Holy meat, it had been delivered to him by those he served, cast up in his path. Food from the ocean depths. A last supper to celebrate the coming of the crabs, for surely their hour of triumph was nigh.
to which the hero’s response is:
‘They’d rigged up some kind of crab shrine in there and spewed all over it. Then lit out.’