‘The Hobby’ by Lisa St Aubin de Terán

Published by Amaurea Press,
19 May 2026.
ISBN: 978-1-91427828-0 (PB)

By way of introduction, I can do no better than reproduce the author’s note: ‘While all my characters are fictional, this novel was inspired by some of the many paedophile conspiracies that have been uncovered in recent years, as well as the case histories of abused children.’ 

The novel begins in 1984 when a concerned mother calls police about an elderly peeping tom, Alfred Marchman, who lives nearby and seems to be taking an unhealthy interest in her young daughter. Two constables visit the ailing Marchman’s hovel and find sufficient evidence to take the matter further. One area of interest is Marchman’s links with the Violet Trellis Fan Club, an association which began during World War II to support a child star. ‘She was Britain’s Shirley Temple,’ Marchman tells the officers, ‘the most famous child star we ever ‘had’. Amongst his cache of such items, Marchman particularly treasures the signed photo of Trellis: ‘Her blonde ringlets framed her face like a plump cherub’s. She had dimples and pale wide eyes.’

Enter Detective Inspector John Custer. For the past three years he has been a member of the Paedophile Unit of the Obscene Publications Squad at New Scotland Yard. He has his personal reasons for wanting to bring paedophiles to justice. He has training in forensic pathology and a photographic memory. Custer’s interest is piqued by Marchman, and during an examination of the latter’s photo collection he takes particular notice of two. One is of a young girl on a bed. The look on her face strikes a chord with Custer and begins to haunt him. The other is of two men ‘standing in the gateway of a property of substance’. Again, it is the look on their faces that he notices ‘(gloating’ he calls it). He wants to track them down. One problem is that both photos are at least 20 years old. Marchman is arrested. 

Armed with such flimsy evidence for an investigation, it is hardly surprising that Custer’s superiors will not sanction one, so he takes it upon himself. He manages to persuade a colleague, Jolly Campbell (her full name is Jollianne), to spend the weekends with him driving around the Home Counties in what seems a foolhardy attempt to trace the building in front of which the men are standing. Their mutual attraction remains unspoken. As Marchman’s increasingly disordered mind begins to spill beans and other discoveries are made, the investigation becomes official. Three men in particular, one of whom is titled, come under suspicion of paedophile activity. They are linked through the Violet Trellis Fan Club and wartime service, but much more is uncovered. Grooming is a major thread. The three men are now living close to each other in Essex. Custer and Campbell pose as husband and wife and take a cottage next door to the large house of one of the men. His house is bugged by the police. The investigation soon widens, and the aim is to net ‘an entire ring of predatory paedophiles harvested from the top echelons of British society.’ A list is given: ‘A lord, a Member of Parliament, a merchant banker, a solicitor, a consultant surgeon, a headmaster, a judge, an Anglican bishop and a captain of industry.’ 

Given that the reader knows relatively early in the novel who the main villains are, the suspense comes from finding out whether (and if so, how) they will be brought to justice. There are moments when the investigation could go wrong. Custer survives what appears to be an attempt on his life, and later he is unaware that he is still a target. Although the author in the quoted introduction makes clear the fictional nature of the investigation, some prominent real life paedophiles are mentioned, and there are many references to events at the time of the investigation, such as the Broadwater Farm riot. The wartime episodes have a convincing atmosphere.

This is a complex novel with unsettling scenes, but it shows decent people trying their best to bring unpleasant criminals to justice. There is compassion. In her conclusion, the author is not above showing what seems to be genuine remorse on the part of a paedophile who is sufficiently weak to have been led by others. He dies of shame, so it is said. Others give no evidence of remorse and believe what they have been doing should be allowed in law. Not the easiest of subjects, then, but it is a well-constructed and engrossingly-told story that builds convincingly. 

And there is a little hint of a heart-warming development in the last line …….
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Reviewer: David Whittle

Lisa St. Aubin de Terán's first novel, Keepers of the House, won the Somerset Maugham Award, and her novel The Slow Train to Milan won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. She currently lives in London and Italy. After leaving the Andean hacienda, she lived as a perpetual traveller for the next twenty years. Then, in 2004, she settled in Mozambique, establishing the Teran Foundation to develop community tourism. She lived there until 2021, returning to London with a bag full of manuscripts, including her autobiography (Better Broken Than New, also published by Amaurea Press in 2024), and two new novels, The Hobby and Kafka Lodge. 

David Whittle is firstly a musician (he is an organist and was Director of Music at Leicester Grammar School for over 30 years) but has always enjoyed crime fiction. This led him to write a biography of the composer Bruce Montgomery who is better known to lovers of crime fiction as Edmund Crispin, about whom he gives talks now and then.