Cell

Campbell Scott's measured pace leads the listener through this updating of King's 1978 bestseller, THE STAND, with the earlier novel's apocalyptic super-flu replaced by a cell phone pulse that renders anyone with Motorola to the ear a vicious zombie with indiscriminate eating habits. As a band of ragtag survivors staggers north from Boston to Maine, Scott does a smooth, subtle job with the challenging Yankee accent in all its urban and rural permutations. Poorly adjusted editing does pitch Scott's voice eerily deep at times, but the story is entertaining overall. And if you're a cell phone user, you're guaranteed to hesitate the next time you prepare to punch "Send." A.M.D. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine

December 2, 2013
By combining plausible developments in artificial intelligence with current concerns about the number of available general practitioners, Cook (Nano) has produced one of his better recent thrillers. L.A. radiology resident George Wilson is racked with guilt after his fiancée, Kasey Lynch, dies of hypoglycemia as he was sleeping next to her. As he prepares to begin his final year of residency, a former med school colleague and occasional lover, Paula Stonebrenner, invites George to attend a rollout of iDoc, a smartphone app that functions as an individualized primary-care physician, which uses sensors to continually monitor vital signs and provide instantaneous diagnosis and treatment. The concept seems too good to be true, and that apprehension proves warranted when several test subjects of the app die unexpectedly, leading George to become obsessed with ascertaining the cause. The truth behind the deaths is both logical and surprising, and enables Cook to engage with serious medical ethics issues.

Narrator George Guidall captures the suspense of this high-tech medical thriller. iDoc, a smartphone app and microchip replacement for primary care doctors, is under medical trials when patients and friends of Dr. George Wilson die unexpectedly. Dr. Wilson and an insider at Amalgamated Health Care, the conglomerate behind the virtual physicians, work to expose iDoc's role in the untimely deaths. Listeners are propelled through the story with Guidall's expert pacing and emphasis as he depicts each plot twist with skill. However, his lackluster treatment of some dialogue segments doesn't keep the characters distinct. This weakness aside, CELL is an exciting story, with a matching performance. K.C.R. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine