By Pam Walatka

Sometimes a charming book brings out my mean streak - I fail to be charmed. I apologize to the many fans of M. C. Beaton, whose “Death of a Dreamer” (Mysterious Press/Warner Books, 2006) is part of a best-selling series and the basis for six episodes of a TV show aired on the BBC.

M. C. Beaton is a pseudonym for Marion Chesney, who has published several successful mystery series and more than 100 Regency romances. Romance novels make my skin crawl. But this is a free country, and all readers get to choose their favorite authors and genres.

Many of you will run out and get this book because you know you will enjoy another Beaton. This is a nice, cozy police procedural that could be as comfortable as an old pair of slippers (everyone has their own taste in slippers). There is no gore and none of the characters is scary, even the perpetrator has some charm.

In this latest installment of the Hamish MacBeth mystery series, Hamish - an intelligent, unassuming police officer in a small town in northern Scotland - solves the murder of a newcomer who claims to be an artist and fantasizes that another artist is in love with her. She is more than a dreamer - she is a nut case.

The writing is OK, perfectly clear and readable, but all the characters talk in the same short, simple sentences. Beaton hammers hard on short sentences: “Hamish dropped Pricilla back at the hotel. Then he drove to the police station. He had not checked the morning’s mail. He threw the usual junk into the trash bin and then found one from the bank in Braikie. He opened it up.”

Hamish is romantically involved with several women, but the relationships are shallow, implausible and uninteresting. All he ever does with the women is take them out to dinner. He saves his genuine affection for his cat and dog. One of his women friends asks, “Does Betty know she has serious competition?”

“Like who?”

“Like your cat and dog. You know what you are? You’re nothing more than an old maid.”

Beaton, who was born in Scotland in 1936 and still lives there, is not a bad writer. And she turns the occasional phrase: “He had never had snails before. He thought they were quite tasty, although a bit like garlic rubber.”