The Castafiore Emerald is the twenty-first of The Adventures of Tintin, the series of comic albums written and illustrated by Belgian artist Hergé, featuring young reporter Tintin as the hero. Conceived by Hergé as a narrative exercise, the cartoonist wanted to see if he could maintain suspense throughout sixty-two pages of story with no villains, locations, guns or danger, and with a clearly deceptive solution.[1][2] Consequently it is a story rich in comic setpieces, red herrings, mistaken interpretations, false tracks, pseudo-disappearances, and colourful characters.
