The Secret Of The Unicorn – Hergé, 1942-43 ★★★½

Embarking on a Model Mystery

There is nothing as satisfying as a long-running adventure series settling into full hum. That’s exactly what you get with The Secret Of The Unicorn, 11^th installment of “The Adventures Of Tintin.”

Our hero is now completely established in his signature role of adventurer-detective, “a real Sherlock Holmes” as his dog-buddy Snowy dubs him. His new best friend Captain Haddock gets his biggest part yet, a double role in fact.

Speaking of doubles, The Secret Of The Unicorn kicks off Tintin’s first fully-realized two-part adventure with a tale of texture and complexity that leaves plenty of story for the sequel. [Earlier, The Blue Lotus sprouted from the preceding Cigars Of The Pharaoh, but those stories are very different and self-contained.]

If not the best Tintin, Secret Of The Unicorn is a nice place to start.

The Secret Of The Unicorn opens at an outdoor market inspired by the Place du Jeu de Balle in Brussels, where Thompson and Thomson are on the lookout for a pickpocket. Where will he strike next? Image from http://en.tintin.com/news/index/rub/0/id/4308/0/the-flea-market-of-the-place-du-jeu-de-balle-the-secret-of-the-unicorn.

It begins with Tintin at an open-air market buying a model ship he fancies giving Haddock. Two men accost him, each offering him more than he paid for the model. Tintin politely declines. The model is later stolen from Tintin’s apartment, but not before yielding a vital clue. To put it all together, he enlists the aid of Haddock, who talks about a family journal relevant to the case:

“It is the year 1676. The Unicorn, a valiant ship of King Charles II’s fleet, has left Barbados in the West Indies and set sail for home. She carries a cargo of…well, anyway, there’s a good deal of rum aboard.”

The secret of the Unicorn, as it turns out, is treasure, lots of it, the result of a pirate haul brought aboard the Unicorn after a battle. The Captain’s direct ancestor, Sir Francis Haddock, was its sole survivor, and cryptically recorded where the treasure was hidden.

Elements of The Secret Of The Unicorn show up in the 2011 hit film The Adventures Of Tintin, directed by Steven Spielberg, including the mystery of the model ship. Image from https://www.spotern.com/en/spot/movie/les-aventures-de-tintin-le-secret-de-la-licorne/11700/the-model-of-the-ship-the-unicorn-tintin-the-secret-of-the-unicorn.

An initial reading of The Secret Of The Unicorn was for me one of my happiest Tintin experiences, alive with adventure, mystery, and personality. Haddock really found his place in the series here; the comedic and narrative elements are exceptionally well-blended.

Then I read it again and thought: What a crawl! Everything that happens in Secret is so drawn out. You get a full page of Tintin just trying to open a door. Nothing is resolved, either, except for a sidebar tale of a serial pickpocket. Its main villains are bland and a bit dim.

But if any book can be said to succeed or fail by virtue of a single flashback sequence, it is this one. That is because, a fourth of the way in, what had been a minor if curious property crime in downtown Brussels explodes into a swashbuckling mini-adventure on the high seas, helmed by Haddock’s doppelgänger ancestor Sir Francis.

Sir Francis, at center with the familiar-looking beard, deals out death to the pirate invaders aboard the Unicorn in what may be one of the most violent moments ever to appear in "The Adventures Of Tintin" series. https://tintin.sg/collections/postcards/products/postcard-museum-secret-of-the-unicorn.

The flashback has the feel of an Errol Flynn movie, complete with explosions, swordfights, and widespread slaughter, all doled out at a deft comic remove. Hergé keeps the story playful by intercutting violent flashback action with an increasingly sloshed Captain Haddock acting out Sir Francis’s survival feats in his apartment.

The big reveal of the flashback is that Sir Francis left a model ship apiece for each of his three sons, models very much like the one Tintin found at the outdoor market.

“There’s one funny detail: he tells his sons to move the mainmast slightly aft on each model. ‘Thus,’ he concludes, ‘the truth will out.’”

The plethora of coincidences found in Secret will test the patience of many adult readers, and younger ones, too. But I went with it anyway.

Thompson and Thomson employ their investigative talents, to Captain Haddock's initial annoyance. A review in the online graphic-novel guide Slings & Arrows notes this was one of the first Tintin books translated into English. Image from https://theslingsandarrows.com/the-adventures-of-tintin-the-secret-of-the-unicorn/.

The stretched-out narrative does play havoc with Hergé’s usual crackling pace, but also gives his story room to breathe. This not only allows the author to invest that flashback sequence with plenty of juicy detail (I got a kick out of all the nautical jargon Sir Francis spouts, not to mention his constant dueling with pirate leader Red Rackham) but also tease out the pickpocket element into its own separate story spotlighting the slapstick antics of Tintin’s police pals Thomson and Thompson.

There is a surfeit of villains in Secret, including Red Rackham in the flashback, but the standout is the least deadly of them, the pickpocket, a self-confessed kleptomaniac with an orderly method for stashing loot.

“I adore wallets. So I… I… just find one from time to time. I put a label on it, with the owner’s name…and I add it to my collection.”

The Unicorn at full sail. Even the figurehead of the mythical creature on the bow is well detailed. Image from https://www.pinterest.com/pin/300896818829945696/

Note must be made of the art in Secret. It ranks as best in the series since King Ottokar’s Sceptre, perhaps since The Blue Lotus. Especially in the flashback, Hergé’s characteristic use of clear-line or ligne claire style shows up to brilliant effect when depicting the galleon Unicorn with its masts and sails laid out in fine detail against a frame-filling azure sky.

Dramatic illustrations keep popping up thereafter, particularly when Tintin finds himself trapped in a vast vault-like space festooned with antiques and sundry valuables. It turns out to be the basement of a posh manor house owned by the main baddies; Tintin must engineer a frantic escape involving many close calls and false alarms. While not very sophisticated plotwise, this sequence draws out Hergé’s playful side.

Tintin discovers a vast collection of antique valuables as he works to uncover the mystery of the model ships. Image from https://www.books4kids.net/en/p/318/the-secret-of-the-unicorn.

I love how Hergé manages not one but two rescues out of left field here, incorporating separately both Snowy and Haddock. Even Thomson and Thompson accomplish some good. With the introduction of Nestor, faithful butler at Marlinspike Hall, the main cast of “The Adventures Of Tintin” are nearly all assembled here. Only Professor Calculus has still to arrive (he debuts in the next book.)

Secret Of The Unicorn first appeared in installments in the pages of Le Soir, published in Nazi-occupied Belgium. My English translation indicates Sir Francis is British, which makes me wonder how the delicate matter of allegiance to a then-national enemy was navigated.

The surrealism which featured so strongly in the prior Tintin adventure, The Shooting Star, is maintained more subtly here, with the lengthy flashback and the kooky pickpocket who holds the keys to all the mysteries without being the least bit concerned about any of them.

Did World War II push the series into a more overt escapist approach? Or was Hergé moving into a more meta frame of mind as he matured? Tintin himself clearly changed a lot. Introduced as a reporter over a decade prior in Tintin In The Land Of The Soviets, he now has left journalism far behind. His only interaction with newspapers here is when he notes with satisfaction a fake story planted in one by the police.

Faithful butler Nestor pops in for the first time ever in a Tintin story late in Secret Of The Unicorn, initially as Tintin's adversary. Eventually things get sorted out. Image from http://en.tintin.com/albums/show/id/35/page/0/0/the-secret-of-the-unicorn. 

But stepping away from reality was a blessing for the series, giving Tintin license to venture further out into a character we can enjoy, one not held down by deadlines or paychecks. This escape from wartime reality would continue long after World War II was over.

Bringing together separate parchment pieces provides a satisfying wrap-up in itself that also sets up the next adventure, Red Rackham’s Treasure. Hergé even presses this point by having Tintin address the reader in the final panel, telling them “…we shall certainly have plenty of adventures on our treasure hunt…You can read about them in RED RACKHAM’S TREASURE!”

Even Haddock seems taken aback by this breaking-of-the-fourth-wall plug. It’s an odd note to close on, but in tune with the rubbery grip on reality that by now had begun defining this series. Things would get weirder still for Tintin readers, and for the better.