Vera Wong Zhuzhu is the protagonist of Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers. She is a 60-year-old Chinese mother and certain she knows the right way to do everything. Vera’s Chinese horoscope animal is a pig, believed to give sincere advice. However, her husband is deceased, and her son, Tilly, ignores her texts. When she was a child, she went to her parents for advice even when she didn’t need it—because it was her filial duty to make them feel needed. Vera herself has a need to be needed, and her tea shop is an expression of this need. She chooses the right tea for each customer—of which she has only one, her friend Alex, until a murder brings Riki, Sana, Oliver, and Julia into her life.

Vera’s boredom and loneliness lead her to interfere with the murder investigation by taking Marshall’s flash drive and staging a break-in. She believes herself wise, and her opinion is validated by the police’s dismissal of Marshall’s death as accidental. She takes all four suspects of the murder under her wing, caring for them but also holding them accountable for their mistakes. Although Vera’s advice is valuable, her deception temporarily drives her new family away.