The result is a schizophrenic book that is basically two disparate halves mashed together to form one strange story involving exploding cars , Middle-Eastern unrest, scheming returning villains, and a weird recurring gag resulting from a … In a sense, this is the last of the pre-War Tintin stories, even though it was half-written and published after the conflict was over, and after the switch to more pulpy adventure of the previous four books, it feels odd to return to the more …