Murder and Sweet Tea discussion

I've always been a sucker for a well crafted simile. I found a great one today and wanted to share. It is from Jeffery Deaver's Carte Blanche.
"Silence washed in unpleasantly, like a tide polluted with hospital waste."

Is that great, or what? I can just feel that uncomfortable silence, can't you?

If you find a similarly wonderful simile, please share!

Ewww.

It's always difficult reading something out of context. I'm a long-time Deaver fan. However, as a standalone simile, this one doesn't work for me. It would take me out of the story and away from silence. Maybe because we were living in New Jersey when real hospital waste was washing up on the Jersey shores--hypodermic needles, blood soaked gauze, etc. Similes that take the reader's mind too far off the subject break the story flow. That's what this one would do to me. Like Lucy's, "Ewww." I haven't read "Carte Blanche" yet, but looking forward to it.

As a Wodehouse aficionado, I'll offer a few from the master.
"Dark hair fell in a sweep over his forehead. He looked like a man who would write vers libre, as indeed he did." The Girl in the Boat, 1922.

"I turned to Aunt Agatha, whose demeanour was now rather like that of one who, picking daisies on the railway, has just caught the down express in the small of the back." The Inimitable Jeeves, 1923.

"He groaned slightly and winced, like Prometheus watching his vulture dropping in for lunch." Big Money, 1931.

Oh, dear. It's hard to stop once I get started on this.

Lucy wrote: "As a Wodehouse aficionado, I'll offer a few from the master.
"Dark hair fell in a sweep over his forehead. He looked like a man who would write vers libre, as indeed he did." The Girl in the Boat, ..."

What a riot! I can't decide which one I like the best. :)