I’m always on the look out for PAN related material so when I saw a copy of ‘Hammerhead’ by Dynamite I had to get a copy. It is either a homage or a pastiche depending on your view point and this particular cover was apparently one of seven variants produced for part one. They don’t seemed to have replicated it for the other five parts of the story. It has what is meant to look like a sticker on the from saying CBLDF from which it gets it variant title and means ‘Comic Book Legal Defense Fund’ (my speller checker is a bit miffed by ‘defense’)

Talking of homage or pastiche HERE is a link to the Honeypot Designs blog (sometimes it asks if you want to continue, I’ve not found any problems so far) It shows several mashups for James Bond books, the challenge this week is to name all the original titles of the covers used! I’ll give you a starter ‘Dark Interlude’ by Peter Cheyney (If you do a search on the site for PAN you’ll get several more)

I’ve also added another Berkley edition of ‘The Return of Moriarty’ which was a lot later edition than the one I thought I’d bought. The challenge now is still to find the two from 1981 and ‘The Revenge of Moriarty’ from 1988.

I’ve also added one more cover by Jas.E. McConnell, namely ‘The Grand Sophy’ which brings the total so far up to eighteen.

Back in July fellow PAN Fan Jem Birch asked me about titles, namely which were the shortest and which were the longest. Well it turned out there were several contenders for shortest including  ‘Jet’, ‘Mia’, ‘Sex’, ‘BRM’ and ‘Raj’ but only one for the longest ‘Booth’s Handbook of Cocktails and Mixed Drinks’ by John Doxat. This was first published by PAN in 1966 and a revised hardback edition was published in 1967 by Arthur Barker which seems to be a reverse of the norm.In the blurb in the PAN 1983 edition it says “John Doxat, who has been described in an American journal as Britain’s ‘foremost thinking drinker’, was born the day the Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated at Sarajevo; was educated at Charterhouse and in Paris; practised varied journalism (wartime service in the Intelligence Corps); went into PR i9, and thence into the broader field of publicity and advertising with Booth’s, and in 1969 became publicity manager of Buchanan Booth’s Agencies Ltd, the DCL subsidiary, distributors of Black & White and Buchanan’s Reserve Scotch Whisky, Strathconan Malt Whisky, Booth’s Finest Dry Gin, High and Dry Gin, Cossack Vodka and Hine Cognac”

Click HERE to see the page of PAN covers including one variation from 1973 I’ve only found on an American sellers website where he is asking £42.28 plus £27.07 postage!!! Doxat seems to have written many books over the years but with a consistent theme, namely drink. One  has a link to another favourite of mine, James Bond, in that 007 gets a mention on the back cover of ‘Stirred – Not Shaken’ published by Hutchinson in 1976. This seemed like a very good title until I looked on Amazon and was amazed to see so many other books with the same title plus others with ‘Shaken – Not Stirred’

I’d love to go to the Los Angeles Vintage Paperback Show on March 19th this year but it’s not going to happen so I was pleased to see two PAN titles used in the montage for the Facebook cover photo.

We have been away for several days so a very quick blog this week. We were camping on the Wirral where it has really been too hot to be pleasant so we looked for air conditioned places to visit. One was the Lady Lever Art Gallery in Port Sunlight where we kept coming across a film crew in almost every room. We tried really hard to stay out of shot(!) while I was trying to remember who it was that was presenting, the one with all the makeup who kept taking selfies? Turns out it was Giles Coren for a program on Sky Arts early next year. There is  a very tentative link in that there is a marble bust of PAN in the North Rotunda. I also planned to visit the Williamson Art Gallery just up the road as it has a second hand book shop but we were ‘galleried out’ after nearly three hours so went down market and ended up sitting on the beach at New Brighton eating our sandwiches.

I spotted this title on a website and put in an order but still waiting for it to arrive to add a better image. Because it says ‘Piccolo Craft Books’ it sounds like a series but so far I’ve only found two titles., the one above and ‘The Piccolo Craft Book’ Anyone know of any more?

Just realised I’ve missed Raymomd Chandlers birthday on 23rd July. If he hadn’t have died in 1959 he’d have been 128. I’ll include his covers I intended for this week next week.

Finally I think this seller on eBay could be being a little too optimistic ……..

Still doing random searches for the Golden PAN Award while adding covers to go with the titles and came across this snippet from ‘The Bookseller’ from the 20th August 1960.Aubrey Forshaw. on the right above, took over at the helm of PAN Books in 1952 on the death of Alan Bott. In one newspaper article I found a passage which stated “The name PAN was picked by Forshaw out of the Dent’s Junior Everyman” Can anyone confirm that?

I thought I had found all the Frank Yerby editions from the late 70’s as I had scanned the 15 listed in the latest title but just found another ‘Speak Now’ This has a cover in a style unlike any of the others but I’m sure I’ve seen it on other author’s books. I’ll have to investigate.

I was also very pleased to find another title which has the yellow PAN block on the front and spine namely ‘Invitation to Live’ by Lloyd C Douglas

Sorry to hear Umberto Uno died last Friday. I think three of his titles were published by PAN under the Picador imprint.

After celebrating 150 years since the publication of ‘Alice in Wonderland’ in 2015 PAN tells me this year they are promoting two authors who both have anniversaries. H G Wells has two anniversaries of his own being born in September 1866 and dying in August 1946, I think I’ll give him a page in September. The other author is Rudyard Kipling but I’ve missed his anniversary which was his death in January 1936 so I’ll put a page up for him soon.

It was while looking at my Kipling titles I found a hardback I’d forgotten about namely ‘Kipling at the Taipei Hilton’ This was a special edition of ‘The Just So Stories’ from Piccolo dated 1979 but doesn’t state where it was printed unless the Chinese text does. It was to be given away at a dinner hosted by Gerald Harper who signed the edition I have. Who cannot think ‘Adam Adamant Lives! when they hear that name? It has additional pages giving biographies of Harper and Kipling plus the menu for the meal.

I also have a hardback copy of ‘Lost Horizon’ by James Hilton which is the PAN 1993 edition printed in Singapore for the Shangri-La Hotel. The pictures on the page are the dust jacket as the covers are just plain green.

The third hardback is a presentation copy in a box of “Red, White and Rose’ by Edward Penning-Rowell. It is the 1967 edition simultaneously published as T27 in paperback. Both editions were printed in The Netherlands probably due to the large amount of colour illustrations unusual in a PAN book. There is a later 1973 paperback edition and I think I may have seen a hardback edition looking like T27 with the same cover but not with a separate dust jacket.