Although The Castafiore Emerald received critical acclaim for its humorous depiction of its characters following a trail of red herrings, it failed to match the commercial success of previous volumes due to the experimental nature of its narrative.

Tintin and Captain Haddock are walking through the countryside of Marlinspike when they come across a Romani community camped in a garbage dump, and reunite a lost little girl named Miarka with her family there.

Suddenly, Irma informs Castafiore that her jewels have been stolen, and Tintin suspects Gino who runs away during a temporary power cut.

Following the culmination of the previous story, Tintin in Tibet (1960), Hergé began planning his next adventure, seeking advice from the cartoonist Greg.

[12] The reporter and the photographer, Christopher Willoughby-Droupe and Marco Rizotto (Jean-Loup de la Battelerie and Walter Rizotto respectively in the original French version) of the Paris Flash, are introduced into the series here, and would later be retroactively added into a re-drawing of The Black Island (1938) by Bob de Moor, also making a reappearance in Tintin and the Picaros (1976).

[20] Hergé also introduced the Romani people, members of whose community had previously appeared in Destination New York (1951), another book from The Adventures of Jo, Zette and Jocko.

[22] To ensure that his depiction of them had some accuracy, he approached Father Rupert in Verviers, who had some experience with the community, reassuring him that "the episode with the Romas will not pain you".

[12] Whenever Castafiore fears her jewels were stolen, her expressions, which involve placing her hands on her face, were influenced by a photograph of her model in real life, Maria Callas, taken by Cecil Beaton in 1957.

[32] In the original French version, Calculus ignores Haddock's attempt to refer to the latest developments of colour television in the United States when presenting his prototype; this does not occur in the English edition.

[33] Michael Farr, author of Tintin: The Complete Companion, stated that in The Castafiore Emerald, Hergé permits Haddock to remain at home in Marlinspike, an ideal that the "increasingly travel weary" character had long cherished,[34] further stating that if Hergé had decided to end the Tintin series, The Castafiore Emerald would have been "a suitable final volume".

[34] He compared the story to the detective novels by Agatha Christie, in that the narrative was "littered from start to finish with clues, most of which are false", misleading both Tintin and the reader.

[34] As a result of its "experimental, exceptional nature", Farr believed that The Castafiore Emerald "never gained the public recognition it merits", stating that while attracting "a loyal following" it had not become one of the most popular Adventures of Tintin, something that he thought was "unjust".

[28] English screenwriter and author of Tintin: Hergé and his Creation (1991), Harry Thompson stated that in The Castafiore Emerald, "everything is topsy-turvy", with obvious villains being shown to be harmless, and alleged crimes turning out to have not happened.

[10] He noted that in the story, Castafiore's "dramatic femininity" disrupted the "idea of sociability" that pervaded Marlinspike, with its "proper respect of space, a form of harmony in independence".

[10] He added that "this casually alluring tale is one of the most subtly handled of the adventures; a riot of clues, both real and false, give The Castafiore Emerald an unequaled density",[41] elsewhere referring to it as "a catalogue of mishaps with nothing or no one spared".

[42] He also saw the book as being "a sort of flashback" for Hergé, allowing him to relive events from his own past; thus, Peeters thought that the constant renovations at Marlinspike represented the constant renovations at Hergé's country home of Céroux-Mousty, while Haddock's time in the wheelchair represented his former wife's Germaine time spent similarly disabled, and Castafiore was a parody of Germaine herself.

[43] Ultimately, he felt that the story – "the last great adventure of Tintin" – was "also a swan song", for Hergé "did not dare to continue down this path, where not all of his readers had followed him", and which had represented "a permanent loss of innocence".

[44] In June 1970, a long article on The Castafiore Emerald by French philosopher and author, Michel Serres, appeared in the literary review, Critique, under the title, Les Bijoux distraits ou la cantatrice sauve.

[45] In 1991, a collaboration between the French studio Ellipse and the Canadian animation company Nelvana adapted 21 of the stories into a series of episodes, each 42 minutes long.

[47] The cast included Michel de Warzee as Captain Haddock, Hélène Bernardy as Castafiore, and Amani Picci as Tintin.