Hergé opens 'The Red Sea Sharks' with a telling scene that almost qualifies as a manifesto. Tintin and Captain Haddock have just watched a movie together and they're discussing how its lead has a strong resemblance to General Alcazar. The captain suggests how preposterously convenient the ending was, with a nephew showing up after twenty years just because his uncle thinks about him, and equates it to the likelihood that the general, who they haven't seen for years, might just pop up on a street corner. In the very next panel, he literally walks into General Alcazar.

While Tintin albums are often preposterously convenient, this one is unashamedly so and Hergé is more than happy to dismiss any criticism of that with his very first page. If you kept reading after that, he seems to float to readers, why would you expect the rest to play out any differently?

That encounter also sets up the other trend for this book, the nineteenth in the series, of bringing back characters from earlier albums. Hergé had done that before, with a number of characters on his list to pepper here and there as needed. However, with this one, he goes beyond any previous book that wasn't an actual sequel or second half to a two-part story. And all that starts right here on the first page with General Alcazar, then continues when they get back to Marlinspike Hall and find Abdullah, the practical joker son of Emir Ben Kalish Ezab, there waiting for them.

Oh, and of course, the appearance of both these characters sparks the plot into motion. General Alcazar is late for an appointment so vanishes quickly but drops his wallet as he does so. When our heroes attempt to return it to him at the Hotel Bristol, where he claims to be staying, they quickly find that he isn't. That prompts an examination of the contents and that prompts a phone call and suddenly we're in a mystery about international aeroplane sales. When they fall prey to Abdullah and his latest antics, they learn that there's been a coup d'etat in Khemed, so it isn't safe for him there. Their enemy, Bab El Ehr, has seized from his father.

Through the magical power of convenience, these two stories gradually morph into the same one. Thomson and Thompson show up to ask Tintin questions about his friend, the general, because Interpol has asked them to keep an eye on a man named Dawson, who the general promptly met. Of course, while they aren't supposed to give anything away, they give everything away and Tintin has what he needs to start investigating, starting with the discovery that Dawson was the police chief in the International Settlement in Shanghai, making him a bad guy in 'The Blue Lotus'. He's a worse guy here, who quickly ensures that Tintin and Haddock are denied entry when they fly over to Wadesdah to see what's happening in Khemed.

All these returning characters do so relatively fleetingly but with meaning in the story. These are far from cameos. Alcazar is deep into this mystery and so is Dawson. Abdullah isn't; but his father is, so his presence triggers that. Next up, after more convenient but enjoyable adventures in the air and in the desert, our heroes look up Senhor Oliveira de Figueira from 'Cigars of the Pharaoh' and 'Land of Black Gold'. Before long, after more convenient but enjoyable adventures in a hidden city behind a Roman Temple carved out of a mountain—and clearly modelled on Petra—we learn that the villain at the heart of it all is Rastapopoulous from 'Cigars of the Pharaoh', here going by yet another name.

In fact, Rastapopoulous is aware of their involvement and he ably—but not too ably—schemes to have them disposed of. He puts Allan on the job, Captain Haddock's first mate when we first met him in 'Cigars of the Pharaoh' but who also reprised his appearance in 'The Crab with the Golden Claws'. Allan fails and their raft, left adrift on the Red Sea, is conveniently rescued by the villain's private yacht that's out there hosting a party; where he's accidentally rumbled by a guest, Bianca Castafiore, from 'King Ottokar's Sceptre and 'The Seven Crystal Balls', not to forget the previous book in the series, 'The Calculus Affair', who welcomes them on board in his name.

She's a little peripheral compared to the others, though she tended to be, but the rest all play an important part in proceedings, perhaps none less than the Emir and Papadopoulous. We haven't even got to Jolyon Wagg yet, who doesn't even arrive until the final page to provide a humorous coda in his inimitably annoying style. What all these means is that there are few characters here who aren't old friends or foes. The most obvious is a man named Skut, who starts out as a bad guy but, through both circumstance and common decency, changes sides. That's him on the cover with the eye patch, just in case you wondering who he was.

Behind all these reunions, of course, there's an actual story and it's one that covers a heck of a lot of ground. Where it has most value beyond these recurring characters, it's about slavery. There's a trade in African Muslims who think they're going on pilgrimage to Mecca but are actually being sold to buyers in countries like Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Of course, Tintin and Haddock do all they can to aid the ones that are left with them to die on a burning ship.

It seems surprising but Hergé was shining a light on a contemporary practice. Neither Yemen nor Saudi Arabia abolished slavery until the mid-sixties—and, yes, I mean the 1960s—and the Red Sea was one of the three primary slave routes. The majority of slaves at that point travelled willingly, duped into believing that they were on the Hajj, only to find when they arrived that they weren't and were now legally the property of someone else. Officially banned in the sixties, it continued somewhat into the eighties but has now been replaced by the kafala system that brings in foreign workers but ties them to specific employers. It's not legally slavery but it can seem that way.

'The Red Sea Sharks' was originally serialised in 'Tintin' magazine from 1956 to 1958, meaning that at least four countries in the middle east still had legalised slavery and benefitted from the Red Sea slave route. That was still the case when it was collected into album form in 1958 in French and in 1960 in English. To us, Tintin tends to be seen as an adventurer, someone who gets caught up in a succession of adventures and comes out the other side in the way that an adventure hero would. However, this reminds us that he was actually a journalist and many of those adventures happen because he chooses to fly into danger for a story, naturally taking a moral stance in the process. With this book, his author, Hergé, was doing the same thing from his chair in Belgium. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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