A missing painter and a menu to make a gourmet's mouth water set the stage for The Long Dinner, a cunning Golden Age case for H. C. Bailey's celebrated detective, Reggie Fortune. One of six stories collected in Mr. Fortune Objects (1935), this ingenious mystery gives the plump, deceptively languid Reginald Fortune - surgeon, gourmand, and adviser to Scotland Yard - a puzzle in which good food and foul play prove closely entwined. H. C. Bailey (1878 - 1961), a journalist and leading light of the Golden Age of detective fiction, created in Mr. Fortune one of the era's most distinctive sleuths, combining forensic shrewdness with a genuine moral passion for justice. Wry, humane, and cleverly plotted, the tale shows the short detective story at its most satisfying.