Stephen King's 'Cell'

The New York Times reviews Stephen King's "Cell":

"Cell" begins with a big, graphic jolt. On a pleasant October afternoon in downtown Boston (beware any scene featuring an innocent ice cream truck), everything suddenly goes crazy. People attack strangers, break things and speak in wild gibberish, all as a consequence of the brain zapping that the book calls The Pulse. It has been delivered via cellphone. Only the Luddites and phone-phobes are safe. So far, so good - although it would have been better had Mr. King not agreed to promote "Cell" with cellphone ring tones being sold by his publisher. Anyone who uses a cellphone (Mr. King does not) has been zombified: in a book dedicated to two pioneers in this thematic area, Richard Matheson and George Romero, Mr. King creates a "Night of the Living Dead" scenario with a technological twist. "Except these people aren't dead," explains a still-sentient Boston police officer. "Unless we help them, that is." Mr. King spends part of "Cell" contemplating the essential darkness of human nature. Stripped of social constraints, the Pulse people create a Hieronymous Bosch tableau of hellish depravity. They can be found reeling, staggering, biting their own mothers or fighting over Twinkies. The author's mouthpiece, a comic book artist named Clayton Riddell, finds time to take the long view about this disintegration and comeuppance. "Three days ago we not only ruled the earth, we had survivor's guilt about all the other species we'd wiped out in our climb to the nirvana of round-the-clock cable news and microwave popcorn," Clay observes. "Now we're the Flashlight People."

Positive review overall. I'm looking forward to reading it.