This was the second Tintin book I got as a child, so I have a certain nostalgic attachment to it. Looking back now it’s not amongst the best of Tintin’s adventures. But, it being a very early work, that’s not so surprising.
As well as taking on the mob – although his main adversary in the adventure ends up being the fictitious Bobby Smiles, the very real Al Capone is the mobster behind the criminal network Tintin is initially pitted against (following on from mention of Al Capone in Tintin in the Congo*) – our young reporter is embroiled in, amongst other things, an oil discovery, leading to a surreal sequence in which a city springs up instantly around him, and numerous other scrapes.
These allow him to narrowly escape being killed by Indians, lynched by rednecks, turned into dog food, or drowned in the bay by mobsters, and numerous other grisly ends. In this early adventure the serial nature of the original story is more apparent than in later, smoother works.
I wouldn’t recommend this as a starting point, but for those who know and love Tintin it’s an essential part of the saga. There was much better to come, but this story retains a place in my heart and my collection, both for old times’ sake, and for its own early Tintin-era charm.
* These being, as far as I know, the only times Hergé refers to a real person in the Tintin books.