What do you do when your best friend is accused of murdering the officer who saved your life as a baby? That’s Katie True’s challenge in Tricks of Fortune, which is the sequel to Lina Chern’s award-winning Play the Fool. When everyone around tells True that her best friend is clearly guilty of the crime, True isn’t so sure. But she’s not certain that she really knows her best friend, or the man who saved her life. True decides to take her tarot card reading skills to find the truth.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Elisa Shoenberger
What made you decide to set the series outside of Chicago?
Lina Chern
Part of it is just very practical. That’s where I live. I wanted to recreate the environment that I kinda stewed in while I was writing this [book]. I’ve also always had a fascination with places that other people don’t find very interesting. I just feel like there’s beauty and meaning everywhere, the meaning that you bring with you.
I’ve just lived up here for many years now, and it’s become familiar to me and precious in a way, even though I tend to poke gentle fun at it in my books. But there’s a complexity that can be found anywhere you live. I just find suburban Chicago to be kind of a quirky place.
When I was doing law enforcement research for both books, I was talking to police officers. There’s all this stuff that goes on here that people don’t really think about. It’s all the more interesting and more meaningful, because this place has such an image of squeaky cleanness. But there’s all kinds of stuff that happens here. It’s fascinating.
Elisa Shoenberger
Could you talk more about your work shadowing law enforcement for your books?
Lina Chern
I had done what they call “A Citizens Police Academy.” I think a lot of police departments have this kind of thing now. I think police departments wanted to show the public that they weren’t these monsters that they were seeing on the news. It was at least a little bit of a PR effort, but basically it was this class where anybody, any regular Joe or Jane, could come in and learn a little bit about what cops do every day.
Then this cop came and taught the investigations section of the class, which is detective work.
I just ended up asking him if he would be willing to fill in some information and talk to him for a little while. I would just text him randomly, sometimes when I was writing, “Oh, can you tell me what the difference is between assault and battery?”
[But then a big case happened in Lake County.] Around here, the towns are very small, so any big cases like a homicide aren’t handled by the local departments. It gets handled by the Lake County Major Crime Task Force, which is sort of an elite collection of handpicked detectives from all over the county. He was one of them, which I found fascinating.
I was also in touch with the commander of the Lake County Major Crime Task Force. I had just briefly interviewed him a year or two before, and so I already kind of had an “in” with him. He let me come to the big press conference where they announced the final findings of the case. I interviewed him after that. It was almost like I got two perspectives on [the case].
Elisa Shoenberger
Changing gears, what made you decide to focus on tarot cards?
Lina Chern
I will let you in on a little secret. I’m not actually as into tarot cards as it might seem. They were just a convenient thing that I used to do. When I was much younger in my 20s, I taught myself how to use them and attempted to do a little bit of what Katie does in the book, which is read randomly for strangers on the street for a little bit of side cash.
One of the things that really jumped out at me was the reactions I used to get from people. I was basically making it up. This was even before the internet. Whenever I used to read for people, the reactions I got were incredible. They were always like, “Oh my gosh, that’s exactly what’s going on in my life.” Or, “That’s amazing. This must be magic. How do you do it?” At that point, I knew that there was something there, but I couldn’t quite figure out exactly what it was.
I just feel like tarot cards are a representation of our natural tendency to tell stories about ourselves and about the things that happen in our lives. They’re basically a set of dice illustrated with our favorite storytelling tropes. It’s basically the entire realm of human psychology illustrated on these tiny little cards. And it’s the randomness of them and the familiarity that makes them seem like magic. We’re all kind of familiar with the same stories. There’s only so many places where a reading can go, so a reading is basically a dynamic story that is being created on the spot by the reader, the querent (the person who is having their cards read), and the random element that the cards provide.
A lot of people ask me, “Do you believe they’re magic? Do you believe they’re telling the future?” No, I really don’t. I believe that the “magic” comes from that particular combination of familiarity and randomness. That’s why in readings, people feel like the reader somehow perceives exactly what’s going on in their lives.
Elisa Shoenberger
In both books, you show different ways that tarot cards can be used. You have Katie reading the cards and you have Katie using the cards to clarify her own thinking. Could you talk about that?
Lina Chern
After Play the Fool came out, I started talking to people about the way they use tarot cards. People [weren’t] using [tarot] in the traditional, mystical, occult way; people used them to make sense of their own lives and their own [thoughts] that they may not even be aware of. What fascinates me most about them is that they are a pathway into our subconscious.
Check out Lina Chern’s website for more information on both books!
FICTION
Tricks of Fortune
By Lina Chern
Bantam
Published July 1, 2025
