Psychic operative Jessie Rayburn has been living at Haven since running away from her family and the town of Baron Hollow in rural North Carolina. Haven is a place created by Special Agent Noah Bishop, of the Special Crimes Unit of the FBI, to perfect the abilities of psychics for investigative purposes.

Now, Jessie finds she must return to Baron Hollow to deal with the events that led to her fleeing in the middle of the night 15 years ago. When Jessie fled Baron Hollow, she left her younger sister, Emma, to care for their father, who has since died. In the interim, Emma has turned their ancestral home into an inn and become a vital part of the small community. Though Emma has never been psychic, lately she has been experiencing terrible nightmares where she sees women being horribly brutalized and then murdered. Emma is shocked when Jessie tells her she's coming for a visit.

Unbeknownst to Jessie, a fellow psychic, Nathan Navarro, has been sent to assist her. Sensing a dark and evil presence in the town, it doesn't take long for Navarro to discover the mutilated, naked body of a young woman in the untamed woods outside the town. From what he sees, Navarro concludes it to be the work of a serial killer. Jessie knows she has to start digging into her painful past and figure out what actually happened that caused her to flee. She tries to do it carefully, so as not to alert the killer. But she doesn't do a very good job of that, and soon the entire town is speculating about why she's returned. The killer finds her antics amusing, while he continues his evil ways, eventually with Jessie in his grip.

I have to say, Jessie's adverse personality and reckless actions, especially to danger, were a bit unsettling. I cared far more for Emma and Navarro as characters than I did Jessie, but maybe that's the way it's intended. That said, Kay Hooper's HAVEN is an intensely complex thriller with lots of dark and interesting plot twists that should please her many fans.