"Bloody Hot"

by René Appel

Late in 2005, EQMM editor Janet Hutchings asked me to find her another Dutch story for the magazine's "Passport to Crime" feature, again by an author unknown to American readers. I contacted Theo Capel, whose "The Red Mercedes" I'd translated for "Passport to Crime" a couple of years earlier, and he steered me to René Appel. "Bloody Hot" is a suspenseful piece which reminded me of the style of Patricia Highsmith, and I was happy to work on it. Janet liked my translation, bought it and published it.

I later translated more of René's stories for EQMM and one for Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, and in 2023 Genius Books published my translation of one of his novels, The Amsterdam Lawyer. Over the years, René and I even wrote a couple of short stories together, one for EQMM, one for a British anthology, and one for Amsterdam Noir, which we also co-edited.

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