Vera Wong's Guide to Snooping (on a Dead Man)

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of physical abuse, emotional abuse, and death.

The protagonist of the novel, Vera is a 61-year-old tea shop owner in San Francisco’s Chinatown neighborhood. She is also an amateur investigator and becomes a social media star in this novel. Vera is described as being physically fit with smooth skin that belies her age. She takes care of her skin by avoiding coffee and always wearing an enormous visor outdoors to shield her face from the sun. A recurring gag in the novel is that Vera capitalizes on her name being confused with that of Vera Wang, the famous fashion designer. Even the signboard on her tea shop reads, “Vera Wang’s World-Famous Teahouse” (22), purposely misspelling her last name. Her canny utilization of this confusion shows she has a knack for marketing. 

After solving one murder mystery in the first book in the series, Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers, Vera refers to herself as a sleuth. She is always armed with her notebook so she can jot down points about her cases. Vera also likes to compose lists that help with her investigations, such as her to-do list about next steps after discovering Xander’s death.