Chenai “Ce-Ce” Chisango is a single mother in her early late twenties-early thirties. Her father is the distinguished Rastafarian academic and community leader, Dr Abel Chisango. As a child, Ce-Ce was inspired by popular British and American detective novels such as the Famous Five, Nancy Drew and Three Investigators’ series, and more grown up ones such as Sherlock Holmes, Christie’s Miss Marple and Poirot, and also the TV shows such as Murder, She Wrote and Cat’s Eyes.
However, when she grew up, she found out that the Zimbabwean Police, like virtually all other public and private institutions, do not recruit Rastafarians unless they cut off their locks. Never mind what the Constitution and a substantial body of case law based on the same say, the Rastafari Faith is not regarded as a bona fide religion and its adherents are portrayed even in the educational system as amusing eccentrics at best.
Crushed, Ce-Ce tried that world-famous Zimbabwean woman’s vocation- marriage. However, she married outside the Faith. As if that was not ill advised on its own, she took her marriage to that place where many Zimbabwean marriages have faced every possible test and failed dismally- the United Kingdom. She came back with an infant daughter and set about rebuilding her life and reviving her dream of becoming a detective.
By the time her younger brother, Farai, returned from Bosnia and Iraq where he had worked as a mines clearer, Ce-Ce had undergone training in Security Management, Private Investigation, Forensics and other disciplines. She tells him they are going to be detectives. At first, he is not keen on the idea. He tries to pick up his life from where he had left it, but there have been so many changes since.
Ce-Ce is clearly the driving force behind the Dread Eye Detective Agency. Even so, she can't do without Farai. She is aware that she can't hold on to him forever, at some point soon he will meet someone and want a life that is independent of a big sister. When that day comes, she too will be a lonely soul.
Farai Chisangois in his late twenties, a young man who found himself when he joined a Zimbabwean company contracted to clear land mines abroad. When he came back, he found his sister had returned from England and was ready to start a private investigator’s firm. At first, he did not want to be a part of it. But, as much as he had changed, so too had Zimbabwe, with some friends gone to seek greener pastures abroad and some establishing families. After trying to get back with an ex-girlfriend, Farai decides to join his sister in the detective firm. He soon finds that while he lacks her intuition, powers of deduction and insight in to human nature, he has a natural flair for high-tech surveillance & forensics procedure. They make a great team.
Farai sometimes comes across as fun loving, and always has a new girlfriend, much to the despair of their religious father and his fiercely protective sister. However, Farai is as serious about his faith as the rest of the family. In fact, his religious zeal is one of the reasons he hasn’t pursued a relationship beyond the level of flirting- there are not that many eligible Rastafarian young women around. Sometimes he resents his father’s insistence on perfection, but a compromise is reached as he shows the patriarch that he is anchored in his father’s teachings but, as an individual, will naturally redefine those teachings for his generation without eroding their essence.
Other Characters:
Sgt Sambiri is the irascible, no-nonsense Head of Armed Robbery & Homicide at Chitungwiza Central Police station. He takes pride in his work, but often finds himself frustrated by the political machinery, by the dinosaurs at the top of the police hierarchy and by some of his subordinates. He has a love-hate relationship with the Chisangos. Unlike most police officers, Sgt Sambiri doesn’t harbour any prejudice against Rastafarians per se, but he cannot abide private investigators. To him, they are no more than mercenaries, policemen and women for hire and therefore guided not by the desire to maintain order, investigate crimes and bring offenders to justice but by market-forces. However, as their paths collide frequently, Sgt Sambiri finds himself forced to revise his opinion.
Another thorn in his side is his niece by marriage, Detective Susan Chimenya, foisted on him by the same people that control recruitment in the Force, and who happen to be his in-laws. He has a choice in the matter however; put up with her or be relocated to a district where terrestrial radio & TV signals are blocked by mountains and the only crime to solve is cattle rustling.
Detective Susan Chimenya could be offered as living proof that it is possible to sustain a career as a detective and not have a clue. Yet under that beautiful-but-dim exterior is the shrewd mind of a woman who knows what she wants, and is not discouraged by initial setbacks or failure. She has decided that Farai is the man of her dreams. Her attempts to bag him provide some of the humour in the series. She may just get her man yet!
Dr Abel Chisango is an internationally respected academic and community leader. He raised Ce-Ce and Farai on his own, after their mother abandoned the hard life the Rastafarian community faced then. He has had to deal with the fact that his only son doesn’t want to carry on after him as a Rastafarian savant, but wants to serve the community in his own way. He now understands that just as a he rose to redefine what it actually means to be a Rastafarian in contemporary Zimbabwe.
There is also a Mr Nigel Van der Merwe, the Chief Operations Manager of Haka Insurance Group, an old friend of their father who throws business their way. Haka Insurance Group initially refused to work with the Dread Eye Detective Agency- the deep seated prejudice held in the corporate world against Rastafarians-but was now warming up to them after the Chisangos saved them millions by exposing fraud.
Another recurring character is Sister Jessica, who works for a major mobile network and helps the Chisangos with phone records and GPS tracking.
