{"id":17417,"date":"2025-07-21T06:43:35","date_gmt":"2025-07-21T05:43:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tikit.net\/panfans\/?p=17417"},"modified":"2025-07-21T06:48:58","modified_gmt":"2025-07-21T05:48:58","slug":"escape-of-the-amethyst-martin-cruz-smith-and-how-long-ago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tikit.net\/panfans\/2025\/07\/21\/escape-of-the-amethyst-martin-cruz-smith-and-how-long-ago\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Escape of the Amethyst&#8217;, Martin Cruz Smith and &#8220;How long ago!&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Following on from my newly acquired artworks from last week, this ones by Ed Blandford for G142 &#8216;<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.tikit.net\/PANG142.htm\"><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><em>Escape of the Amethyst&#8217;<\/em><\/span><\/a><\/strong> Blandford&#8217;s name is visible on the artwork but does not appear where it should on the cover. He became the art editor at Panther and ended up in the 1970s drawing 8 page back-up comic strips for things like &#8216;War Picture Library&#8217; and according to Steve Holland &#8220;They weren&#8217;t very good&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.tikit.net\/panfans\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Cruz.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft  wp-image-17429\" src=\"https:\/\/www.tikit.net\/panfans\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Cruz-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"189\" height=\"189\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.tikit.net\/panfans\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Cruz-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.tikit.net\/panfans\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Cruz-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.tikit.net\/panfans\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Cruz.jpg 304w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 189px) 100vw, 189px\" \/><\/a>I see Martin Cruz Smith passed away last week and PAN published several of his novels which I&#8217;ve added to a page <a href=\"https:\/\/tikit.net\/2025\/July\/CruzSmith.htm\"><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><strong>HERE<\/strong><\/span><\/a>. There are more but I&#8217;ve not included ones that don&#8217;t have the PAN logo on the front cover. Martin Cruz Smith (Martin William Smith 3\/111942 \u2013 11\/7\/2025) was born in Reading, Pennsylvania and died of Parkinson&#8217;s disease in San Rafael, California. He wrote many titles under several pseudonyms but the 11 Arkady Renko books he wrote as Cruz Smith. I intend to read his latest Renko novel &#8216;Hotel Ukraine&#8217; published this year as when we were last in Moscow we stayed in this wonderful hotel, one of Stalin&#8217;s seven sisters. It was odd that news of his death first popped up on a Facebook page and it was days before the news outlets had caught up. His official website still doesn&#8217;t mention it but then again it doesn&#8217;t seem to have been updated for a few years.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.tikit.net\/panfans\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Lancaster.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"449\" height=\"102\" src=\"https:\/\/www.tikit.net\/panfans\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Lancaster.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-17428\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.tikit.net\/panfans\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Lancaster.jpg 449w, https:\/\/www.tikit.net\/panfans\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Lancaster-300x68.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 449px) 100vw, 449px\" \/><\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">In the Lancaster Guardian there was an article about <span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><span style=\"color: #800000;\"><strong>The Old<\/strong><\/span> <span style=\"color: #800000;\"><strong>Pier Bookshop<\/strong><\/span><\/span> by Lucinda Herbert. What I found amusing was the part where it said <em><strong><span style=\"color: #800000;\">&#8220;The Old Pier Bookshop opened in 1990, and is now crammed floor to ceiling with books including many over 50 years old&#8221;\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/em>Wow that long ago is mind blowing, another century like! To read the article click <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lancasterguardian.co.uk\/news\/old-pier-bookshop-morecambe-oldest-book-shop-5210385\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">HERE<\/span><\/strong><\/a>. I&#8217;ve not been but must add it to my list if it has books like that.<\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Following on from my newly acquired artworks from last week, this ones by Ed Blandford for G142 &#8216;Escape of the Amethyst&#8217; Blandford&#8217;s name is visible on the artwork but does not appear where it should on the cover. He became the art editor at Panther and ended up in the 1970s drawing 8 page back-up [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tikit.net\/panfans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17417"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tikit.net\/panfans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tikit.net\/panfans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tikit.net\/panfans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tikit.net\/panfans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tikit.net\/panfans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17417\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tikit.net\/panfans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tikit.net\/panfans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tikit.net\/panfans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}