Created by Pattukkottai Prabakar
Motorbike-riding BHARAT and “SUSI” SUSHEELA are a couple of young detectives who run the Moonlight Agency out of the rundown Nelson Building located somewhere in Tamil Nadu, India. Also emploted at the agency are receptionist Marikkozhunthu (a.k.a. Madhavi) and “office boy” Ravi, in a series of very popular lighthearted tales by Tamil pulp writer Pattukkottai Prabakar.
At times the stories recall David Addison and Maddie Hayes of American television’s Moonlighting–despite an obvious attraction, Bharat and Susi continue to alternately flirt and natter at each other, while ostensibly working cases together.
But mostly, they seem to bicker, about everything from the case at hand to staffing decisions. Naturally, Bharat is a little bit of an old-fashioned oinker, whom Susi routinately knocks down a peg or two. Another of the running gags in the series (one that’s even been picked up by Subha, another writer of Tamil pulp) revolves around the often bizarre slogans on Susheela’s seemingly endless supply of T-shirts.
They’ve even “double-dated,” collaborating with another popular Tamil detective duo, Subha’s Narendran and Vaijayanthi from the Eagle’s Eye Detective Agency.
Prabakar is a prolific and bestselling Tamil author with over two hundred short stories, three hundred novels and seventy serials to his credit, mostly crime fiction and thrillers. He also writes for film and television. Recently, a few of his Bharat and Susheela stories have been published in English and have appeared in collections of Tamil pulp fiction put out by Indian publisher Blaft.
STORIES
- “Sweetheart, Please Die!” (2008, The Blaft Anthology of Tamil Pulp Fiction) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
- “Title Unknown” (2017, The Blaft Anthology of Tamil Pulp Fiction, Volume 3) | Buy this book
Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.
