Set in 2002, Kerns’s thrilling fourth Hayden Stone outing (after 2016’s The Yemen Contract) finds CIA operative Stone hoping for a break from danger as he deepens a personal relationship with Contessa Lucinda Avoscani in Tuscany. Those wishes are dashed when a seven-year-old Palestinian girl is sent to their door and instructed to announce to Stone that she has “a message from Beirut” before detonating a suicide bomb. It fails to explode, and the narrow escape proves to be the precursor to more threats on Stone’s life, which he attributes to his longtime nemesis, Abdul Wahab bin Khalid. Wahab, the son-in-law of Saudi Prince Mohammed al-Tabrizi, is one of the CIA’s most-wanted for having killed several CIA agents. Along with Chechen Muslim extremists, Wahab plots to take advantage of the Bush administration’s preoccupation with invading Iraq to strike a major blow on behalf of his jihadist movement. Stone’s efforts to thwart Wahab take him across Europe and the Middle East, exposing him to more jeopardy. Readers will keep turning pages to see what happens next. Robert Ludlum devotees will be pleased. (Self-published)