As PBS’s hit show “Downton Abbey” drew to a close, books set against the same glittering Edwardian backdrop started to be released. Among them was Tessa Arlen’s Lady Montfort series, starring an aristocratic sleuth and her loyal housekeeper. The first volume, DEATH OF A DISHONORABLE GENTLEMAN, distinguished itself enough from “Downton Abbey” to make a mark of its own, but its follow-up, DEATH SITS DOWN TO DINNER, is lackluster.

"The one redeeming character is Lady Montfort’s smart and practical housekeeper, Mrs. Jackson, but she’s little more than a younger version of Mrs. Hughes (of 'Downton Abbey' fame)."

Our heroine, Clementine Talbot, Countess of Montfort, is a bit too out-of-touch with reality and clueless with regard to the conditions of those who work for her to be appealing. When she attends a birthday dinner for Winston Churchill at the home of her dear friend, another guest, a man with the charmingly British name of Sir Reginald Cholmondeley, winds up dead. Regardless of the fact that the police are plenty capable and her own housekeeper doesn’t want to get involved, Lady Montfort drags everyone, kicking and screaming, into a boring investigation.

The author spends far too much time on the niceties of everyday society and two-dimensional characters for this reviewer to really care about who killed Sir Reginald. The stakes aren’t high enough, the suspense and the plot lag, and the villain reveal is unsatisfying. The one redeeming character is Lady Montfort’s smart and practical housekeeper, Mrs. Jackson, but she’s little more than a younger version of Mrs. Hughes (of “Downton Abbey” fame).

What made “Downton Abbey” so unique was not only the contrast between upstairs and downstairs, but the quintessential goodness of the upper-class characters. That appealing nature is sadly lacking in this series’ heroine, making it hard for the reader to care about Lady Montfort. In the process, this “Downton”-lite effort manages to fall quite short of its beautifully rendered cousin.