Divining the Murderer: 12 Mysteries with Tarot Cards, Astrology, and Seances

It’s the first in the 1990s Bast Mystery trilogy. Karen “Bast” Hightower may work as a freelance graphic designer in NYC, but she’s a modern witch who reads tarot cards as a side gig.

Bast ends up taking up a new role as detective when she learns a close friend has died mysteriously. Her friend had taken up with a secretive coven, and Bast thinks the coven may have had something to do with her friend’s death.

Now she has to use her detective skills and knowledge of witchcraft to get to the bottom of her friend’s death.

Joshua Croft is a private investigator who is brought in on a most unusual case. A magician named Quentin Bouvier was found hung from the ceiling, and his valuable tarot card had been stolen at a New Age convention.

Joshua has been tasked by a defense attorney to prove that her client was not the murderer. Now he finds himself deep in the world of mystics, tarot card readers, and New Age practitioners to figure out who wanted the magician dead.

It’s the fourth book in the five-book 1990s Joshua Croft series.

In this mystery thriller, Ann Stilwell finds herself unexpectedly working as an associate at the Cloisters in New York City. It’s a dream come true since Stilwell wants to study Renaissance art.

There she meets her fellow curatorial associate, Rachel Mondray, who is brilliant and obscenely wealthy; and her boss and curator, Patrick Roland.

They are putting together an exhibition on tarot. But their interest is more than just academic; it’s an obsession.

The future becomes murky when Ann makes a huge discovery that could make her career, and, at the same time, a body is found at the Cloisters.

Who is behind the death? Can Ann keep herself safe and sound?

Only the cards can tell…

The offer came at the right time. Sisters Tori and Cassie Bishop get the job of a lifetime: be "witches in residences” for a wealthy woman named Rose at her mansion.

But it’s not going to be an easy one for them. Almost everyone in the house despises them.

Rose is nearing the end of her life and has called on the sisters to help call upon the spirits before her impending death. But when she dies suddenly and money goes missing, the sisters are accused of the crimes.

Now they have to figure out who was behind it all before their fate is sealed.

Drew Benson can touch items and get visions about the people who used them. But she has little interest in using them since her aunt, a psychic, was implicated in the disappearance of a young teenager.

But the past doesn’t ever really stay in the past. When her high school enemy comes back to town to investigate the murder, it throws Drew for a loop.

However, with Drew’s gift, she could find out what really happened to the young girl and clear her aunt’s name.

Yes, the book shares its name with another book on the list, but it’s a very different series.

Fiona Miller doesn’t believe in coincidences. What are the chances that she picked up the Hanged Man tarot card just before she gets a phone call that a young man  was found dead, hanging in a construction site?

Very low.

She’s the proprietor of a metaphysical gift shop that sells tarot cards, crystals, and other metaphysical goods. But will her skills help her get to the bottom of the crime?

Using her tarot cards, maniacal yet helpful cat, and her friends, Fiona will have to figure out who killed her late best friend’s son and whether his estranged brother was behind it all.

It’s the first book in the Nero Award-winning five-book (so far) Pentecost and Parker series; it’s the best homage I’ve seen to Rex Stout’s great Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin.

Willowjean “Will” Parker is a former knife throwing circus performer who is taken under the wing of Lillian Pentecost, brilliant investigator. They’ve been hired to solve the murder of Abigail Collins, wealthy widow who threw a Halloween party to connect with her husband after his suicide exactly one year ago.

But instead of spirits, the partygoers find Abigail dead with a bloody crystal ball nearby. Rumors abound that her late husband was taking his revenge, but Parker and Pentecost think there is a very real flesh and blood human behind the heiress’ untimely death. 

Danika Dizon is a high school student with a talent for tarot cards. But when she reads for a fellow student and draws the Death card, the client disappears the next day with no explanation.

The younger sister of her client asks Dizon to figure out what happened to her sister, which gives Dizon an opportunity to show her private investigator mother and mystery writer father that she can solve crimes. But reading tarot and finding a missing girl are very different skills.

The sequel Murder Under the Moon comes out in April 2027.

While some detectives use tarot cards, private investigator David Lowell uses astrology.

He’s been brought on the case of a murdered state judge by his daughter and defense attorney Melinda. Her client, Joanna “Johnny” Colbert is accused of the crime after being heard threatening the judge before their death.

Lowell believes Johnny is innocent of the crime after reading her star charts and sets off to find out who really killed the judge.

It’s the first of the three-book Starlight Detective Agency Series. 

Written only a few years after the Stonewall Riots, this book features Ronald Cornell, a gay man whose partner has been murdered. The cop assigned to the case is a homophobe.

Determined to solve his lover’s murder, he comes up with a list of six murder suspects and thinks that he can divine the murderer if he has their star charts.

He meets disgraced ex-cop Martin Tobin who wants nothing to do with the case, much less an astrological detective. But Tobin finds himself drawn into the case, partially to keep Cornell out of danger, but also because of a sense of justice.

It’s the fourth in the five-book Mitch Tobin series, all published between 1966 and 1972.

Katie True is not living the dream. She’s working at a Russian souvenir store at the mall, another dead-end job in a string of dead end jobs.

She didn’t finish college and has no real plan. The only thing she really likes is reading tarot cards, enjoying the thrill of reading her querents.

When a man comes into the shop, bleeding and disoriented, she offers him a tarot card reading, seeing an easy $20. But it turns out that he has evidence of a murder.

The murder of True’s best and only friend, Marley.

True decides to try to figure out who killed her friend, even if it means further ripping apart her tattered life.

It’s a brilliant book, and I highly recommended it. Chern won the  2024 Mary Higgins Clark Award for Play the Fool.

The sequel Tricks of Fortune came out in 2025.

We’ve got the second book in the four-book (so far) Secret Staircase Mystery. Tempest Raj, the former magician, has been using her talents to help her family’s Secret Staircase Construction company.

They’ve just finished a design project that brings a love of mystery books into a series of rooms in their client, Lavinia's, house. Secret compartments and doorways abound in the space.

To celebrate her new space and her new life without her cheating husband, Corbin Colt, Lavinia wants to hold a seance in the new space. But the seance is interrupted when Colt’s body falls on the table, an impossible crime.

When Raj’s grandfather is accused of the crime, Raj has to use her magician and detective skills to find out how Colt ended up miles away from his home, dead.