Apparently, 'The Secret of the Unicorn' was Hergé's favourite of all his works until he wrote 'Tintin in Tibet' a couple of decades later in a different era. I have no idea why but I wonder if it has to do with it being pure entertainment. Of course, it had to be, given that he wrote it from 1942 to 1943 during the Nazi occupation of Belgium, so political commentary wasn't just out, it would have got him shot. However, it's also very much half a story, a ripping yarn about pirate treasure without a pirate treasure, because that's the focus of the next book, 'Red Rackham's Treasure'.

So, this is all about setup, showing us how Tintin and the other characters stumble onto it, and it's obvious that Hergé was having fun crafting it. Much of that fun seems to be crafting the character of Captain Haddock, who showed up two stories earlier in 'The Crab with the Golden Claws' rather ill-formed, not to mention worse for wear, but felt more like himself in 'The Shooting Star'. Here, he's the captain I remember. There's no mention of a role as hypocritical president of the Society of Sober Sailors. There are plenty of booze jokes, but they're funny and they don't make him a one-note character, which is what he started out as.

The Unicorn, as you might imagine from the cover art, is a ship, a very old sailing ship, and it isn't in this book. However, Tintin buys a model of it from a vendor in the Old Street Market on the first page, as a gift for his friend, Captain Haddock, who notices the stunning resemblance between it and the ship in a painting of an ancestor of his, Captain Francis Haddock, who lived and served the British crown during the reign of Charles II. That spurs the captain to haul out a sea trunk that has languished in his attic for years and that sets up the best sequence of the book.

The captain is already wearing his ancestor’s hat, with feathers stunningly intact given its age, and is wielding his cutlass. However, as he recounts the story of the Unicorn to Tintin from Sir Francis's diary, he practically becomes his ancestor. Of course, they look identical, except for the rest of the outfit, and they act identically too, because clearly our captain is projecting and likely improvising the story as he goes. He's imagining himself to be Sir Francis and he gets so into the character that he reenacts his movements, especially when the pirate crew of Red Rackham attacks.

He practically destroys his own apartments in the process, which leads to my favourite panel of the entire series thus far, a shot of the portrait of Sir Francis Haddock, knocked off the wall to land on top of the captain, with legs and arms sticking out from underneath. It's a delightful amalgam of the two Haddocks, appearing to have truly become one. I'm sure a psychologist would have a field day with that sequence but I'll just point out that it's a long one, Haddock beginning his story on page 14 and not wrapping it up until page 26. It's crucial to the story because it sets up a treasure, but there also needs to be some sort of mechanism to set up the hunt.

And that's where the model comes in, because it's clearly important from the very outset. Tintin buys it for "seventeen and six", which is shillings and pence and amounts to most of a pound. Just as he completes the purchase, a collector offers him double. Then another man barges in and it's suddenly a bidding war. Within three panels, the pair of them bump up their respective offers to thirty pounds, a serious profit, though he refuses to sell. One follows him home. When he's off at Captain Haddock's place, he's burgled and the ship is the only item stolen.

So, the game is afoot. The collector, Ivan Ivanovitch Sakharine, turns out to have another model of the Unicorn, which Tintin confirms isn't his stolen one because Snowy had knocked it onto the floor and he had to mend the mainmast. Later, after his place is ransacked again, even after the model was stolen, he stumbles onto a tiny scroll of parchment that must have fallen out of the model and rolled under a desk. It's the first clue: a cryptic text, along with some numbers and symbols. This is exactly how 'Three Investigators' novels begin and, as with those, we're well and truly in motion, especially as it's at this point that Captain Haddock recounts Sir Francis's diary.

This sounds pretty frantic, as Tintin stories tend to be, confined as they are to just sixty-four pages in their standard album format. However, it really isn't. It might not feel leisurely, but it does feel like we can breathe our way through the story. Previously, this book of setup would have been the first half of a complete story, with the treasure hunt taking up the second. I applaud the decision Hergé took to split them up in to separate stories. This does stand alone, even without a treasure, because it has a clearly defined beginning and a clearly defined end, but it can use all sixty-four of those pages to tell its story and thus has plenty of opportunity to breathe.

Now, there are other things going on, but they breathe too. The very first panel on the very first page tells us about a pickpocket gang and Thomson and Thompson are on that case. In fact, while Tintin's buying the model of the Unicorn from a street vendor, they're buying a supply of walking sticks but have to rely on their friend because both of their wallets have been stolen. This running joke ties to what turns out to be an important subplot that pops in and out throughout the book until its solution provides the crucial information needed to solve the secret of the Unicorn. It's a wonderfully intertwining of story elements to comprise a deep plot. Maybe Hergé liked it so much because it has the most sophisticated, yet seemingly effortless, plot thus far.

With Tintin cleverly solving a mystery, Captain Haddock discovering his element and Thomson and Thompson as gloriously inept as always, this feels like a fully formed Tintin story. Snowy has a part to play too and does so wonderfully, after shaking off the double vision he acquires from drinking a glass of whisky that Tintin diverts from Haddock's mouth. There's also another key element to the series that's introduced here in the location of Marlinspike Hall. I'll revisit that when I review 'Red Rackham's Treasure' because knowledge here might count as a spoiler there, but I will add that it isn't quite the Marlinspike Hall we know and love yet.

And so this is pure entertainment, as I suggested as I began. To illlustrate that, quite literally, one action scene in the cellars of Marlinspike Hall feels rather like a Jackie Chan movie. At heart, it's an escape attempt with one man against three, but it features a glorious use of props that's very reminiscent of what we'd later get from Chan. Another unexpected cultural note is that, when the bad guys unleash their huge dog on our heroes, there's a panel where it looks exceedingly like a certain Scooby-Doo. Now, 'Scooby-Doo, Where are You!' premiered in 1969 and Chan's mastery of props began in the late seventies, while 'The Secret of the Unicorn' was serialised in 'Le Soir' from 1942 to 1943 then published in the album form we know in French in 1943 and English translation in 1952.

So, next up, as Tintin breaks the fourth wall to tell us in the final panels, will be the search for 'Red Rackham's Treasure'. Tune in next month for that next thrilling instalment of 'The Adventures of Tintin'! And now, a word from our sponsor. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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