STEPHEN King doesn't hang around in his latest post-apocalyptic techno-chiller.

Within the first ten pages, the world has been plunged into madness. An electro-magnetic 'pulse' broadcast via mobiles phones (cell phones, as they're called in the United States, hence the title) has wiped the brain of everyone who uses a mobile, turning them into drooling, vicious zombies.

The hero, comic artist Clayton Riddell, is walking through the streets of Boston when phones everywhere start going off and the streets turn into a slaughterhouse as the 'phone crazies' run amok.

He escapes with his life - barely - and with a pitifully small band of fellow survivors heads north on foot to find his family, tormented by the knowledge that his own ten-year-old son has a mobile phone.

It's an interesting premise, and King has great fun with the opening chapters, as the small band of survivors head north for rural Maine along roads choked with smashed cars and dead bodies.

But after a while it all seems a bit samey - haven't we read all this before in The Stand? - and King never develops his theme. There is never any real explanation of what happened or why; the climax in which the normals finally overcome the crazies is too pat; and there's no attempt to look at how the survivors then try to pick up the pieces. Intriguing, but ultimately disappointing.

Updated: 16:07 Friday, February 17, 2006