The twenty-third episode in the series, Tintin and the Picaros (1976) is a Latin-American tale of a coup d’état, complete with hostage-taking and guerrilla warfare. Tintin returns to the country of San Theodoros, which he first visited in The Broken Ear (1937). Hergé’s story reveals the hypocrisy behind the apparently endless cycle of revolution and counter-revolution in South America. Tintin and the Picaros was the last book written by Hergé, and it took more than ten years to complete. As Hergé grew older readers had to wait longer and longer between each new adventu