Some writers cross the borderlines of genre: Vermeulen took an eraser and wiped them out.

It may be a result of his first novel: he wrote it when he was either 14 or 15 (he said). At that age, most people don’t know what pigeonhole to sort themselves into. Perhaps it’s because he started with science fiction, which in many ways is the one genre that contains all others.

That first book, The Accursed Planet, is (thanks to the internet) forever with us. That and other works represent the oeuvre of someone who is either a genius or a hack.

Mozart wrote everything from a clarinet quintet to operas like The Magic Flute. Vermeulen wrote everything from thrillers to sci-fi to historical romance to scripts for children’s films to books on sailing to theatre scripts to short stories.

Born in Antwerp, his books were written in Dutch and, like most novels in Dutch, stayed in Dutch. Too bad, because he stretched himself with work based on the lives of great Flemish figures, like Jerome Bosch (De tuin der lusten – The Garden of Appetites), Mercator (Tussen god en de zee – Between God and the Sea), Brueghel (De ekster op de galg – The Magpie on the Gallows) and two examples slightly less Flemish: Nostradamus (De rivier van de tijd – The River of Time) and Leonardo da Vinci (Het genie in de rattenval – The Genius in the Rat-Trap).

He also published in magazines like Playboy and Pulp, was a long-time editor of sailing magazines and wrote books on skiing, gardening, TV watching and men who go out with younger women. He was someone who could not stop writing and who could write about anything.

He also contributed to the series Vlaamse Filmpjes, which were not films, but books, and which involved a veritable Who’s Who of Flemish children’s authors.

What else? Who knows. He might have made a name for himself on TV or in the movies. According to a good friend, writing in Knack magazine, he had plans to write the libretto for an opera. Mozart would hardly have blinked.

John Vermeulen is one of a number of Flemish crime writers whose work will be explored in next week’s issue of Flanders Today, published on 9 September.

www.crime.nl