Mackenzie’s Magic

The novel begins with waking up with a headache. Maris Mackenzie opens her eyes in a hotel room she does not know, beside a man she does not know. She has his T-shirt on and the last few hours are gone from her memory. The man brings her aspirin and she feels an odd familiarity: this voice, this height, these shoulders. Then she recognises him: two weeks ago he was the temporary hand forking hay in the farm's stable, and Maris had deliberately kept away from him.

Maris is a trainer at the Solomon Green horse farm in Kentucky and the first woman in that job. She is a Mackenzie: her father Wolf taught his children to fight, four of her brothers are married, only Chance is single. All married because they were truly in love, while Maris has dealt only with horses and her career and has chosen to wait for love. Now she recalls something known since childhood: be ready for pain, or you will lose the fight.

The man checks the swelling on her head: a concussion. Without knowing why, Maris flatly refuses to go to hospital: an inner voice tells her to keep away from people. The man introduces himself: Alex MacNeil. Maris asks him «did we sleep together?»; Alex says «no» and adds: «I think we stole a horse.» Maris does not yet grasp what this means.

Slowly it comes back to her: the horse's name is Storm. America's most famous racehorse, black, with a white star on the right foreleg; he was on the cover of «Sports Illustrated», won more than two million dollars in his short career and was retired to stud at four. His owners are the Stonicher family. And Maris remembers: someone wanted to kill him. Her eyes fill and she lunges to call her family, her brother Zane. Alex flatly forbids it.

Thinking he is part of it, Maris tries to hit him. Alex pins her down in a few seconds. And from his reflexes, his calm and weighty voice, even his «smart grey underwear», Maris understands: this man is no labourer. «You're a cop,» she says. Alex admits it: he is an FBI special agent investigating a scheme of killing horses for insurance money. The case includes kidnapping, crossing state lines and murder.

The details of the night come out like this: Maris herself came to him for help, unable to speak from fear. Alex had kept her on his list of suspects too, but that night he changed his mind. They loaded Storm into a truck and trailer standing outside the farm. Alex hid the horse somewhere in the woods and called the FBI office from a pay phone. Maris says only the Stonicher family could profit from the insurance, but it makes no sense: they wanted the horse for stud.

So the first 25% is built on two questions: Maris cannot remember who wanted to kill the horse, and Alex does not want to let her out of his sight. The style is cinematic and quick, with short chapters and short sentences, each chapter ending on a discovery. The book is a 2014 Harlequin edition and in the Turkish translation some words have come out imprecise.

• The book is short and dialogue-driven; scenes change quickly and the viewpoint moves between Maris and Alex
• The Mackenzie family scenes (five brothers, the mother, the wives and little Nick) are the liveliest and funniest part of the book
• The details of horse training and love of horses (Storm's temperament, injury, veterinary care) are convincing
• The heroes falling in love in a day and deciding to marry is the least convincing part of the plot
• Hero and villain characters are schematic: the Stonichers are cartoon-evil and Alex is almost flawless