What is a snark? This is just one of the many unanswered questions Inspector Lewis must ask when botanist Liz Nash accidently unearths the recently buried body of an English professor obsessed with the Lewis Carroll poem, “The Hunting of the Snark.” Locked in bitter rivalry with his brother, professor Murray Hawes was fixed on solving a legendary riddle hidden in Carroll’s philosophical story of an impossible quest for the unknowable. The search for Murray’s killer launches Lewis and Hathaway on an impossible quest of their own, taking them from Oxford’s botanical gardens to the evidence wall of an interfering amateur sleuth.