For Belgian authors that’s Simenon, certainly one of the greatest crime writers ever. For Flemish authors it’s Pieter Aspe, who used to be the caretaker at the Holy Blood basilica in Bruges, and wrote a book because he figured it was the only way out of his humdrum existence.

Aspe is phenomenally prolific, writing at least one and sometimes two books a year. His novels are almost all set in Bruges, and feature detective Pieter Van In and magistrate Hannelore Martens. They’re not only a crime-fighting team, they’re also a couple. And Bruges, apparently, is the theatre of many terrible crimes. When Flanders Today, interviewed him last year, he revealed that his new book would be called Misleid, and be set in the world of beauty contests. We thought he was pulling our leg with a silly pun, but it turned out to be true. That’s the great thing about crime fiction: all human life is there.

Aspe has also given his name to a series of TV plays built around his characters. He no longer has anything to do with it, but his name alone is enough to keep it going as a hugely popular series. It’s as if they’d decided Morse was too dull a title, and called it Dexter instead. But that’s another story.

Ann Van Loock and Marc Sluszny are an unusual couple – and not just because they’re one of the few writing pairs in the crime world (Nicci Gerard and Sean French lead the field) but also because they’re so mismatched. Van Loock is a teacher who writes novels and scripts for TV (Spring for kids, Flikken for grown-ups). Sluszny, on the other hand, is a figure perhaps too flamboyant to fit inside a novel. He’s a commodity trader who once played in the Belgian Davis Cup team, who set a world record for bungee jumping out of a hot-air balloon, who climbed Annapurna without oxygen, and placed eighth in the world championships for fencing. Their books are thrillers more than crime novels. The first, Code Black, has a tennis champion tracking down the former commandant of Auschwitz in his hideaway in the south of France. The latest, Amulet, promises a journey through history from the Vikings to the Nazis at Scapa Flow. Two heads are not necessarily better than one in writing, but they do help in thinking things up. We wonder how many heads it took to invent Marc Sluszny, but they did a good job. www.vanloocksluszny.com

Jonathan Sonnst is somewhat the baby of the group, born in 1976 in Eeklo, with five thrillers (and an autobiography) to his name to date. He made his debut in 2000 with the daring plot of a female protagonist, a former killer-for-hire forced out of retirement. His latest, which will be launched on the day this issue appears, is called Madame Dictator, and is yet another historical thriller (the shelves seem to be full of them) with yet another female protagonist, this time as the sort of regent to the heir to a stinking rich businessman. Things are made more difficult for her by the actions of Hitler and Stalin, who did indeed mess up a lot of lives. www.sonnst.be

Bob Mendes (real name David Mendes) is the doyen of Flemish crime writers, and a man more cautious that Philip Marlowe walking through a blackjack factory. Born in 1928, he worked as an accountant and tax consultant until he was 60, when he decided to throw caution to the wind and become a writer fulltime (he had already published two slim volumes of verse). Mendes’ fiction ranges from crime fiction to spy thrillers to psychological thrillers. Earlier this year he took part in a Canvas investigation into the death of his father, a political activist deported to Auschwitz by the Nazis from the Dossin Barracks in Mechelen. His latest, Dirty Money, has a protagonist who works as an accountant with KPMG. www.mendes.be

Christian De Coninck might be considered to have an unfair advantage over his crime-writing competitors: as the official spokesman for Brussels-Elsene police, he is a proper policeman. So he holds the key to the real information about what goes on in the shadowy corridors of the Kolenmarkt headquarters, which are put to good use in his police procedurals, the first of which, The Prague Connection, was the result of a serious illness and a long period of convalescence. So, at least in concept, were the two other parts of the trilogy: The Octopus Complex and The Boomerang Principle, which was launched in the literature temple Passa Porta last April. De Coninck continues to work as spokesman for Brussels city police, while developing a reputation as a popular speaker. He won an award from an association that promotes Brussels dialect for his portrayal of the city and his use of dialect in his novels.

Stan Lauryssens is probably the most feted of the bunch at the moment, with his 2008 memoir of painting fraud and Salvador Dali, Dali & Me. That made a splash worldwide and is due to be filmed with Al Pacino in the lead role as Dali, and Cillian Murphy (The Dark Knight) as Lauryssens. The director is Andrew Niccol, who directed The Truman Show. The year before he published his thriller, The Sooner You Die, in which a serial killer in Antwerp dresses his victims up as famous movie stars. His next book is reputed to be another memoir about time spent living with an Indian family in London.

Marthe Maeren has as much of an unfair advantage as Christian De Coninck. Born in Knokke, she studied law and criminology at Ghent University (and consumer law in Stockholm!) and still works as a partner in a law firm. She made her debut as a writer with Dead Letter in 2004, featuring a protagonist who’s a lawyer at the Ghent bar (write what you know). That was followed in 2006 by Dead Hand, and last year by The Himmler Legacy. Maeren is the only writer in Flanders to tackle legal thrillers, in the tradition of John Grisham and Ed McBain’s Matthew Hope series.

Mieke De Loof is not only a sociologist and philosopher, she’s also a karate expert, which must have come in handy when she worked (according to her CV) as a night barmaid. Her first book was a war story written with her father Jef, a GP and peace activist, which tackled the problem of nuclear weapons. She moved into crime with Devil’s Sacrifice, which won the Hercules Poirot prize in 2004 when it was published. Her next, Labyrinth of Delusion, had a secret agent tasked with bringing down the Catholic church, and was nominated for both the Hercule Poirot and the Diamond Bullet awards.