Mysteries and Minutiae : British writer Colin Dexter, creator of Inspector Morse, is very like his smart, pub-loving character.

As any mystery buff knows, Inspector Morse doesn’t suffer fools lightly. Neither does his creator, English writer Colin Dexter.

The occasion is an interview, con ducted in a Valley pub, and Dexter chooses to start things off in true Morse-ian fashion. I arrive with bronchitis but assure Dexter that I am not contagious. And Dexter promptly gives me a quiz. You know the difference between contagious and infectious, don’t you? he asks. Not really, I confess. Like the curt, pedantic, saber-sharp police inspector who appears in 10 of his novels, Dexter doesn’t hesitate to show up a new acquaintance with his erudition. Contagious means spread by touch, he explains. Infectious means spread through the air or by other less direct means.

There are dozens of similarities between Dexter and the addictive Inspector Morse. Both live in Oxford. Both believe the world is a vastly better place because of the music of Richard Wagner and the poetry of A. E. Houseman. Both are cruciverbalists who like to show off by using 10-pound words such as cruciverbalist, instead of “a designer or aficionado of crossword puzzles.” Both have nimble minds packed with the minutiae of a top-drawer English education (Morse went to Oxford but didn’t graduate; Dexter went to Cambridge and did). And both believe that pubs are amiable places in which to think.

Inspector Morse (we have yet to learn his first name) is the protagonist of a long-running series, starring John Thaw, on British television. The show has become a favorite on PBS’ “Mystery!” as well. And Morse is also one of the changing panoply of sleuths featured on A&E;’s prime-time “Mystery Movie.” A new Morse special, “Inspector Morse: Driven to Distraction,” will be aired Sunday on A&E; as part of its “Merry Month of Mayhem.”

You get the impression that Dexter is indifferent to the invention of television, except insofar as it has given him thousands of new fans.

“I think it’s really a question of nobody’s ever heard of you and along comes television,” he muses. For his part, Dexter is shamelessly bookish, living the life of the mind with all the brio of someone who has known the alternative. His parents left school at the age of 12. (His father drove a cab, his mother worked in a butcher shop.) Having grown up in a house without books, Dexter talks about Thomas Hardy, Charles Dickens and his other favorites as if their words are meat and drink.

Dexter, who has visited America only once before, is here to promote his latest Morse novel, “The Daughters of Cain.” And since readings and book signings are dry work, Dexter readily agrees to be interviewed at the Robin Hood, as close to a genuine British pub as you’ll find in Van Nuys. Dexter (and Morse) are appalled that modern pubs have jukeboxes and TV sets, but he approves of such traditional amenities at the Valley establishment as real darts, not the electronic kind, bangers and mash and honest British brew.

A diminutive man, Dexter has a Falstaffian appetite--at least by the standards of a culture that regards mineral water as a beverage and green salad as a meal. As the escort Crown Publishers has provided searches for chlorophyll amid the pub fare on the menu, Dexter orders shepherd’s pie and a pint of London Pride. “It’s very nice to find a drop of good beer,” he says, raising his glass with a satisfied sigh.

The new book is vintage Dexter, full of the puzzles and literary allusions his fans love, tightly plotted and strangely moving. Morse is a brusque man but not a hard one, and it is no surprise that women find him dishy, as one character puts it, despite his bad habits and irksome tendency to say exactly what he thinks. Although Morse likes women and beds them from time to time, he has never wed--unlike Dexter, who is closing fast on 40 years of marriage. Indeed Dexter’s long marriage is one of the few but crucial differences between creator and character. Another major distinction, as Dexter points out, “I’m not mean with money.” Inspector Morse rarely fails to stick his amiable subordinate, Sergeant Lewis, with the check.

For many years, Dexter, 65, taught Greek and Latin in British schools, and he also helped devise tests for the national University Examination Board (one wonders how many would-be collegians stumbled on the difference between contagious and infectious). Morse emerged 23 years ago (“like Minerva, born fully fledged from the brain of Zeus,” Dexter has said) in the course of a rainy vacation in the north of Wales. Writing a mystery novel, Dexter recalls, seemed a brighter prospect than listening to his son and daughter fret about the weather. Questions about his childhood cause Dexter to dwell for a moment on how much his late parents would have treasured his literary success. “It’s always a sadness when your parents die before you’ve done anything,” he says quietly.

Dexter is full of opinions, strongly held. Crosswords that contain some genuine mind teaser are a lovely way “to repolish your brain every day,” he says, but “not the stupid synonym puzzles” of the “fish, four letters, river, three letters” type. How tedious.

Also tedious, and quite unnecessary, he opines, is hanging around the police simply because one writes police procedurals. “I don’t go anywhere near them unless I want something,” he says. “It’s bad to get too close to them. You’d get as boring as police work, wouldn’t you?”

And as to beer, well, Dexter is with Houseman on that one: “And malt does more than Milton can,” Dexter recites, “to justify God’s way to man.”

Dexter seems to savor the beer and the verse with equal relish.

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WHERE AND WHEN

What: TV special, “Inspector Morse: Driven to Distraction.”

Where: A & E, the arts and entertainment network.

Hours: 5 and 9 p.m. Sunday