When botanist Li Nash digs up the body of recently buried English Professor, Murray Hawes, Lewis and Hathaway find themselves involved in an impossible quest. Murray was a man who was possessed with solving the riddle of Lewis Carroll's "The Hunting of the Snark". They soon find out that Murray had a rivalry with his brother, who is a lecturer in Theology and Moral Philosophy. They also have to deal with interference from Michelle Marber who is an amateur detective, who believes that that the killer is local medical researcher Alex Falconer.

Lewis and Hathaway are drawn into a world of virtual bullying, but very real murder, when Professor Miranda Thornton is found dead after her dating video is leaked onto a vicious website. Miranda's death initially looks like suicide but, as the detectives dig deeper, they realise that it is actually the final revenge of an old enemy.

Lewis and Hathaway investigate the murder of a baby-sitter, and uncover a swingers' network. The detectives must establish whether the girl's fate is connected to her time spent in a children's home, or whether she was an unintended victim.

A visiting professor is found strangled after delivering a controversial lecture. Lewis and Hathaway have no shortage of suspects, but when one of them is also murdered, her affair with a married professor of Criminology takes the investigation in another direction.