While many people may not think that tarot cards and private investigating could go together, Mia P. Manansala’s debut young adult novel, Death in the Cards, makes the pairing as natural as peanut butter and jelly. She is the author of the award-winning Tita Rosie’s Kitchen Mystery series. Her new series focuses on Danika Dizon, a high schooler at Lane Tech High School in Chicago.
Danika wants two things. She wants a working car and to prove to her mother, a Private Investigator (PI), that she could be a great PI herself. To make money to fix up the very old car she acquired, Danika reads tarot for her classmates.
But when one of her clients goes missing after Danika’s reading, the younger sister of the missing girl draws Danika in to find her. Now, Danika finally has a chance to prove to her mother that she has what it takes to be a private investigator.
This interview was edited for clarity and length.
Elisa Shoenberger
You’ve described Danika as a Brown and Queer Veronica Mars. Where did the idea of this story come from?
Mia P. Manansala
I really like amateur sleuth stories. Cozy is a huge draw to me. But I also really like PI novels. [PIs are] people who technically are working like [law enforcement], but they’re not law enforcement. They’re this weird middle space. I’m [interested in] what makes them choose that kind of profession. I just really like the PI space. [What about] a teenage PI like Veronica Mars. I feel like it’s a very millennial thing. I would love [to put] a modern spin on it. I want to be more inclusive having a queer Filipino main character.
But what’s the hook, right? What’s something you can actually do? I dabble in tarot cards. I basically only read for myself, but it’s something that I enjoy. I like the symbolism. I like the insights you can bring. [You can have] a person who is really good at reading cards and people who come to them for advice. [They] would also probably make a pretty good detective, because they know how to read people.
They know how to be discreet. Because if you’re coming to someone for advice, obviously, you don’t want people running their [mouths]. In high school, there’s a certain amount of trust and vulnerability being a high school kid coming to someone for their problems and trust, which is very important for a PI.
Elisa Shoenberger
You’ve previously talked about how you pulled cards for all the readings except the key tarot reading. Were you surprised by the cards you pulled for a character?
Mia P. Manansala
I don’t necessarily believe in the woo-woo aspect of the cards. It’s helping me see from the outside and get things in order. They’re almost like writing prompts. With each scene, I had a general idea of what I wanted it to be, but I wasn’t sure [what would happen] in writing. [Tarot] is all about making choices, right? Each choice is not necessarily wrong; it just leads the story in a different way. I would actually say the hardest part was figuring out what questions the clients wanted to ask. That would guide how I read the card and where the scene goes.
The insight I gained by doing this pull [changed] how I think about this character, and the revisions added more. There were surprises. They didn’t necessarily change the direction that I went but did change how I thought about a character or how soon a particular decision [took place.]
Elisa Shoenberger
Your first series takes place in a fictional town outside of Chicago. What made you decide to place this in the middle of Chicago at the very real Lane Tech High School, where you went?
Mia P. Manansala
With this one, I want to actually have fun with real places I [know] and spend time there. It was 20 years ago, so I’m sure the school has changed a lot. I want to lean into this, because I didn’t get to do that with my first set of books.
The hardest thing was [knowing] it so well, but from a very different time. I spent a lot of time on the high school website looking up what [kinds] of classes they offer now. What is the schedule? I remember journalism was a club, but when I went to the site, it looked like it [was] an actual journalism class. They take it way more seriously.
I had to fudge things. It’s also fiction. I can make things work the way I need for a convincing story, okay, but I did actually look at the kind of classes they were offering [and] what their bell schedule was like.
When I first came up with this, I really wanted to set it during summer. But again, when I realized what I wanted the story to be, it was not a summer story. It had to be set during the school year when she was doing these readings. One of my baby brother’s friends has a younger sister who still goes to that school. There were some questions I was able to ask an actual youth about certain things. Honestly, that was probably the hardest part.
I wasn’t going to sound like a teenager necessarily. I’m not gonna go on TikTok. It’ll be so dated by the time it comes out, I will definitely sound like, try-hard. It would be too much slang trying to sound hip and cool like a 17-year-old. There’s just no way. When I was 17, I was still not hip and cool. I definitely can’t do that now, as I am almost [a] 40-year-old woman. What was most important to me was to catch the emotion and the vibes [of what] it was to be a teenager. When every emotion is heightened. Everything feels life or death, everything feels so personal. Those are the things I thought were more important to me, but obviously, I didn’t want to sound too adult.
FICTION
By Mia P. Manansala
Delacorte Press
Published May 13, 2025
