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Eradicator
In the NICU, she holds the most fragile lives in her hands. But something inside her is breaking. She's only twenty-four, but between the drugs, the impulsive hookups, and the growing paranoia, her life is unraveling fast. All she knows is that it feels good. Powerful. Like a new version of herself is taking shape. And when it does, people are going to die. Eradicator is American Psycho meets The Fly.
"David Simmons' Eradicator is a sucker punch to the soul, evocative, alive, and screaming, a fantastic fever dream of hard-pavement reality masterfully blended with surrealism in all its beauty and terror. His keen insight into the social conventions that pull people apart and push them together is needle-sharp, his prose is precise and beautiful, and the horrors that engulf his characters are achingly human. You don't just read this book—you feel it, and it's electric."—Mary SanGiovanni, author of Strange Stones
"When David Simmons is done, Baltimore will be a genre." —Charlene Elsby, author of Violent Faculties and The Devil Thinks I'm Pretty
"Amazing." —Paula D. Ashe, author of We Are Here to Hurt Each Other
"David Simmons' Eradicator is a sucker punch to the soul, evocative, alive, and screaming, a fantastic fever dream of hard-pavement reality masterfully blended with surrealism in all its beauty and terror. His keen insight into the social conventions that pull people apart and push them together is needle-sharp, his prose is precise and beautiful, and the horrors that engulf his characters are achingly human. You don't just read this book—you feel it, and it's electric."—Mary SanGiovanni, author of Strange Stones
"When David Simmons is done, Baltimore will be a genre." —Charlene Elsby, author of Violent Faculties and The Devil Thinks I'm Pretty
"Amazing." —Paula D. Ashe, author of We Are Here to Hurt Each Other
- GenresHorror
187 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 11, 2025
5 people are currently reading
100 people want to read
About the author
David Simmons
5 books35 followersDavid lives in Baltimore with his wife and daughter. Simmons is the author of the fantastically bizarre “Ghosts of Baltimore Duology,” where the supernatural and strange grapple with the ever present past of East and West Baltimore. His work has appeared in Strange Horizons, the Washington Post, Brooklyn Vol. 1, Another Chicago Magazine, Hobart, Snarl, 3 Moon Magazine, Apocalypse Confidential, Tahoma Literary Review, Bridge Eight, Across The Margin, the Washington City Paper and numerous anthologies. He is a regular contributor to Books to Prisoners, a Seattle-based nonprofit organization whose mission is to foster a love of reading behind bars, encourage the pursuit of knowledge and self-empowerment, and break the cycle of recidivism.
Twitter.com/WholeTimeDavid
Twitter.com/WholeTimeDavid
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
September 18, 2025
2.5 stars, rounded up.
September 3, 2025
DAVID! Why do I feel like this book beat me up! This was wild and I legit read it in one sitting. My girl Jada went through it in this story, and one minute I was laughing while the next I was scrunching my face. It was entertaining, dark, hilarious, and just plain wild. Now excuse me while I binge more of his books.
September 24, 2025
The other day I was driving up Hoffman Street when this car came tearing around the corner, speeding toward me. If you drive in Baltimore, you’ll understand what I mean by this description: Virginia tags, tinted windows, some dirty white sedan with a pointlessly oversized grill (I don’t have a memory for makes or models); a big chunk was missing out the front bumper too, from smashing into something…like it was about to do to me!
I swerved to avoid it, and as it accelerated past, I glimpsed a pink, furry steering wheel cover and the silhouette of a young woman behind it.
Where was she going? What’s the big hurry? What is so important that you’d rather smash into me than lose three seconds of time by slowing down at your stop sign?
It made me think of Eradicator by David Simmons, a book I started on a sick day from work and finished over the course of the next several mornings. The main character is a young woman, Jada. She has some random job at Hopkins hospital and basically drives all over town causing destruction, and, as you’ll see within the opening chapters, leaves a trail of dead bodies in her wake.
What makes Jada so fascinating and terrifying as a character is she’s so ordinary. Simmons has really captured the mindset of a basic, lower-middle class Bmore county brat like I’ve never before read. This book’s cover text compares it to “American Psycho” which is apt because Patrick Bateman never tries to explain his appetite for destruction. It just flows through him, matter of factly. The character of Jada likewise implies a violent undercurrent to Americans that is incomprehensible and automatic, but is no longer exclusive to elite Ivy leaguers. Trickle down sociopathy in action, my friends!
It’s different from America Psycho though because there is a more Kafka-esque aspect here, as Jada may or may not be undergoing drastic physical changes.
This book is full of insane violence, wild action, and surreal humor, made gripping by Simmons’ visceral descriptions and original voice. So many turns of phrases caused me to either laugh or wince. Oh, and get ready to learn about Cal Ripkin’s wife too, lol.
Don’t miss this one! And stay safe out there. Ordinary folk are going through changes, and not in a good way either.
I swerved to avoid it, and as it accelerated past, I glimpsed a pink, furry steering wheel cover and the silhouette of a young woman behind it.
Where was she going? What’s the big hurry? What is so important that you’d rather smash into me than lose three seconds of time by slowing down at your stop sign?
It made me think of Eradicator by David Simmons, a book I started on a sick day from work and finished over the course of the next several mornings. The main character is a young woman, Jada. She has some random job at Hopkins hospital and basically drives all over town causing destruction, and, as you’ll see within the opening chapters, leaves a trail of dead bodies in her wake.
What makes Jada so fascinating and terrifying as a character is she’s so ordinary. Simmons has really captured the mindset of a basic, lower-middle class Bmore county brat like I’ve never before read. This book’s cover text compares it to “American Psycho” which is apt because Patrick Bateman never tries to explain his appetite for destruction. It just flows through him, matter of factly. The character of Jada likewise implies a violent undercurrent to Americans that is incomprehensible and automatic, but is no longer exclusive to elite Ivy leaguers. Trickle down sociopathy in action, my friends!
It’s different from America Psycho though because there is a more Kafka-esque aspect here, as Jada may or may not be undergoing drastic physical changes.
This book is full of insane violence, wild action, and surreal humor, made gripping by Simmons’ visceral descriptions and original voice. So many turns of phrases caused me to either laugh or wince. Oh, and get ready to learn about Cal Ripkin’s wife too, lol.
Don’t miss this one! And stay safe out there. Ordinary folk are going through changes, and not in a good way either.
September 25, 2025
It's giving Georges Bataille meets ODB. It's giving watching your wife give birth PTSD.
I tried hard not to read this all in one day because I wanted to enjoy but I enjoyed it so much I read it in one day.
I loved the shit out of this dudes short fiction and ordered this book as soon as I discovered it's existence. There have been a few American Psycho clones lately but none of them hit like this. American Psycho meets the Fly it says on the back, but this is a lot more than that.
David and Grant Wamack are covering cultural ground that no one's really attempting right now and this is the latest semi-cynical assault on where we're at as a post-literate, social media influenced society.
Blistering shit here, and I hope this man is seen and protected as the national treasure that he is.
11/10 would watch the hell out of The Whale. Tktktktktktktktktktktk
I tried hard not to read this all in one day because I wanted to enjoy but I enjoyed it so much I read it in one day.
I loved the shit out of this dudes short fiction and ordered this book as soon as I discovered it's existence. There have been a few American Psycho clones lately but none of them hit like this. American Psycho meets the Fly it says on the back, but this is a lot more than that.
David and Grant Wamack are covering cultural ground that no one's really attempting right now and this is the latest semi-cynical assault on where we're at as a post-literate, social media influenced society.
Blistering shit here, and I hope this man is seen and protected as the national treasure that he is.
11/10 would watch the hell out of The Whale. Tktktktktktktktktktktk
September 5, 2025
This novel is all kinds of fucked up. But it also includes plenty of tidbits most probably do not know. David Simmons surely read up on things and came prepared to execute this one with panache and punch. But it’s still all kinds of fucked up and not for the faint of heart.
September 5, 2025
Hahahahaha what the HELL, David. This was gross, weird, and amazing.
Definitely in the category of weird girl horror, so fans of AMERICAN PSYCHO and METAMORPHOSIS will love it.
Definitely in the category of weird girl horror, so fans of AMERICAN PSYCHO and METAMORPHOSIS will love it.
September 29, 2025
I can only compare my experience of reading Eradicator to three equally unlikely things at once:
1. A self-help sermon that tells you to stop apologizing for existing,
2. The kind of violent intrusive thought you’d never admit to your therapist, and
3. A body horror freakout that sneaks up like the weird kid at the school dance, only this time he’s brought scalpels.
That’s not a combination you see often. Most novels pick a lane, but David Simmons doesn’t. He builds a highway system out of three unrelated roads and somehow convinces you that the traffic makes sense.
Born and raised in Baltimore, Simmons writes characters who are both burned out and hyperkinetic. Their souls are slowly corroding, but their bodies haven’t gotten the memo yet. His protagonist Jada. might be his best creation yet: a woman who is literally disintegrating in slow motion who still finds a way to laugh at the absurdity of it all. There’s a kind of gallows humor to her voice that feels less like a character choice and more like the only survival mechanism left.
The thing is, Eradicator is the most relatable novel with the least relatable premise I’ve ever read. You probably don’t know what it’s like to sprout horrific, Cronenbergian appendages in real time. But you probably do know what it’s like to feel dehumanized by contemporary life, to have your individuality chewed up by bosses, algorithms, or just the general grind of being alive. And if you’ve ever flirted with the thought that maybe the darkest version of yourself is also the truest one, Jada’s murderous tailspin makes a terrifying kind of sense.
That’s where Simmons really nails it: he takes the chaos of late-capitalist existence, the burnout, the bad-faith advice about “resilience,” the sense that everyone else is more put-together than you and translates it into body horror. He doesn’t ask whether we’ll survive; he asks whether survival is even worth the cost.
So yes, Eradicator is brutal and grotesque and maybe a little insane. But it’s also cathartic in the same way blasting Nine Inch Nails in your teenage bedroom used to be cathartic in 1999. It reminds you there’s power in embracing who you are, even if who you are happens to be a monster. Especially then.
1. A self-help sermon that tells you to stop apologizing for existing,
2. The kind of violent intrusive thought you’d never admit to your therapist, and
3. A body horror freakout that sneaks up like the weird kid at the school dance, only this time he’s brought scalpels.
That’s not a combination you see often. Most novels pick a lane, but David Simmons doesn’t. He builds a highway system out of three unrelated roads and somehow convinces you that the traffic makes sense.
Born and raised in Baltimore, Simmons writes characters who are both burned out and hyperkinetic. Their souls are slowly corroding, but their bodies haven’t gotten the memo yet. His protagonist Jada. might be his best creation yet: a woman who is literally disintegrating in slow motion who still finds a way to laugh at the absurdity of it all. There’s a kind of gallows humor to her voice that feels less like a character choice and more like the only survival mechanism left.
The thing is, Eradicator is the most relatable novel with the least relatable premise I’ve ever read. You probably don’t know what it’s like to sprout horrific, Cronenbergian appendages in real time. But you probably do know what it’s like to feel dehumanized by contemporary life, to have your individuality chewed up by bosses, algorithms, or just the general grind of being alive. And if you’ve ever flirted with the thought that maybe the darkest version of yourself is also the truest one, Jada’s murderous tailspin makes a terrifying kind of sense.
That’s where Simmons really nails it: he takes the chaos of late-capitalist existence, the burnout, the bad-faith advice about “resilience,” the sense that everyone else is more put-together than you and translates it into body horror. He doesn’t ask whether we’ll survive; he asks whether survival is even worth the cost.
So yes, Eradicator is brutal and grotesque and maybe a little insane. But it’s also cathartic in the same way blasting Nine Inch Nails in your teenage bedroom used to be cathartic in 1999. It reminds you there’s power in embracing who you are, even if who you are happens to be a monster. Especially then.
October 8, 2025
Nasty and fun, true, but didn't quite bowl me over, like a solid hit of ambergris would, I guess. Social media body horror doesn't scratch every itch that I have, it would seem.
July 4, 2025
I have a hunch that this is going to be a very successful book. I will break down why:
1) David Simmons is a very intelligent, naturally curious person. This is reflected in a writing style that is concrete, emotive, and authoritative. It reminds me of Chuck Palahniuk, or even better, Amelia Gray, in that this novel contains sudden, clinical bursts of medical, biological, or historical trivia in an otherwise surreal or emotional scene. We follow our heroine from her job as a car seat safety specialist at Johns Hopkins, to her nights out on the town, to her descent into something other than human via tight chapters that should come with a Surgeon General's warning for nausea. But along the way Simmons' natural curiosity is refracted through the prism of his protagonist's overwhelming hate into a story that is as addictive as it is annihilating.
2) Eradicator takes the form of this genre and distills it into moonshine. It is in the lineage of American Psycho, The Killer Inside Me, even Tampa a little bit, but puts pressure on it until it is compressed into a diamond. There are books that invent a genre, and books that do that genre so well they effectively kill them. That's what Eradicator does.
3) The book takes you by the scalp and drags you to an ending that most books wouldn't dare to try. It's a bold novel that charms you along as our protagonist is sawing off Tinder dates' heads, freaking out her coworkers, and turning into a mutant.
4) The choice to make his protagonist female would not have worked in a lesser writer's hands, but Simmons approaches all of his characters with the fundamentally important mixture of sympathy and humorous, clinical detachment. If you're wondering how to replicate what makes this book work, it's to have spent a lifetime with complicated people, where you love them for their faults. The "commentary," if you can call it that, naturally arises from the ability to laugh at people's evil rather than judge it.
Eradicator is a blistering, ugly book that has a top spot in my favorite books of all time. And I believe other people will feel the same.
1) David Simmons is a very intelligent, naturally curious person. This is reflected in a writing style that is concrete, emotive, and authoritative. It reminds me of Chuck Palahniuk, or even better, Amelia Gray, in that this novel contains sudden, clinical bursts of medical, biological, or historical trivia in an otherwise surreal or emotional scene. We follow our heroine from her job as a car seat safety specialist at Johns Hopkins, to her nights out on the town, to her descent into something other than human via tight chapters that should come with a Surgeon General's warning for nausea. But along the way Simmons' natural curiosity is refracted through the prism of his protagonist's overwhelming hate into a story that is as addictive as it is annihilating.
2) Eradicator takes the form of this genre and distills it into moonshine. It is in the lineage of American Psycho, The Killer Inside Me, even Tampa a little bit, but puts pressure on it until it is compressed into a diamond. There are books that invent a genre, and books that do that genre so well they effectively kill them. That's what Eradicator does.
3) The book takes you by the scalp and drags you to an ending that most books wouldn't dare to try. It's a bold novel that charms you along as our protagonist is sawing off Tinder dates' heads, freaking out her coworkers, and turning into a mutant.
4) The choice to make his protagonist female would not have worked in a lesser writer's hands, but Simmons approaches all of his characters with the fundamentally important mixture of sympathy and humorous, clinical detachment. If you're wondering how to replicate what makes this book work, it's to have spent a lifetime with complicated people, where you love them for their faults. The "commentary," if you can call it that, naturally arises from the ability to laugh at people's evil rather than judge it.
Eradicator is a blistering, ugly book that has a top spot in my favorite books of all time. And I believe other people will feel the same.
September 23, 2025
Simmons is absolutely incapable of boring the reader. This thing is bursting with lore and specificity yet it never bogs down the narrative. Bracingly gnarly and soaked in dread while also genuinely, truly funny, Eradicator is so unique and refreshingly wrong *yet* I have a feeling I can sell some non-reader friends on it just on how irresistibly fucked up it is (and how rad the book looks as a physical object). The book to beat for 2025 so far.
October 17, 2025
Gross, hysterical, and beautifully written. Easy to compare a lot of it to American Psycho, but that's just the surface. David Simmons creates a terrifyingly strange world simply by showing us what our fucking ridiculous world looks like from the outside.
September 25, 2025
Like Cronenberg's The Fly, but....swaggier? (I don't know if that's a word)
For fans of Bret Easton Ellis, Chuck Palahniuk, and Chander Morrison.
For fans of Bret Easton Ellis, Chuck Palahniuk, and Chander Morrison.
October 2, 2025
Absolutely nobody writes like David Simmons and this is maybe his best book yet. Funny, repulsive, deep, and dark. This thing rips from beginning to end.
July 10, 2025
Inspired by the likes of Charlene Elsby and BR Yeager's Apocalypse Party titles, David Simmons' Eradicator is dark and intense. We follow a young black woman as her health disintegrates, and her mind begins to unravel. We witness her transformation, her addiction to social media, and a fictional reality TV show that is quite frankly brilliant. Simmons writes his diverse characters and dialogue with an authenticity that's hard to fake. I hate the term urban, but this is the urban Apocalypse Party fix you haven't realized you needed. No exaggeration, this is incredible and will surely become a future cult classic.
August 17, 2025
Jada - the narrator of David Simmons' ERADICATOR - is the most unhinged character in literature since Patrick Bateman, which will undoubtedly be the cause of this novel inspiring endless comparisons to American Psycho. However, ERADICATOR is something wholly original. It is one of the funniest and weirdest books I've ever read, and most definitely one of the darkest. Propulsive, insane, and entertaining enough to be considered pulpy; distinct, clever, and sharp enough to become a cherished literary classic.
August 29, 2025
Spoke with David for about an hour about his new novel. Check it out here.
A wild, nasty, brutal novel.
A wild, nasty, brutal novel.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews