Here it is, folks. One of the single goriest and nastiest novels ever written.
A gang of thieves robs a rich old man in Texas. One of their number, Dyke, tries to doublecross his partners and escape with the money, but is caught. The crooks torture Dyke, castrate him and leave him for dead. After being rescued by a farmhand and recovering from his injuries, Dyke flees to South America, where he earns a meager living as a fisherman on Malpelo Island, and spends his days nursing fantasies of revenge against his former partners in crime.
One day, a massive earthquake hits Malpelo, opening a huge fissure. Dyke is at sea at the time, and, from his boat, he witnesses hoards of giant praying mantises swarm up and devour the island's entire native population. Proving to be quite the sicko, Dyke decides he finds this sight about as sexually arousing as a man who's been relieved of his ability to get turned on can, and hatches a scheme to capture and train several of the mantises. As luck would have it, every single member of his old gang retired to South America and Dyke has a fairly good idea of where each of them has settled down. And now with his army of killer giant mantises, he decides to get revenge - by having the insects eat not only his enemies, but their families and neighbors as well. And anyone else who gets in his way.
This book is just plain gross. All the scenes of the mantises eating people are rendered in loving, bloody detail, sometimes going on for several pages. Heck, even the non-mantis violence is graphic and cruel, such as the thieves' slow torture of the man they rob. And there are exactly no likable characters. Everyone is a sadistic jerk, an idiot or a cypher. And yet I eat it up (no pun intended).