When police pay a visit to an elderly peeping tom, they unexpectedly stumble upon a loose thread that leads detective John Custer into a murky world of sex crimes and serial killings, of hidden graves and socially impeccable paedophiles. Ignoring the scepticism of his colleagues and superiors, Custer doggedly follows his intuition that there really is something very wrong that needs to be discovered, however cold the trail seems to have become.

Inspired by some of the many paedophile conspiracies that have been uncovered in recent years, and the cases of abused children, The Hobby is a psychological crime thriller, ranging from the fan club of a 1940s child star, through Istanbul and war-torn Burma and Cairo, to 1980s Britain. Custer and his assistant, Sergeant Jolly Campbell, seek to bring justice to the forgotten victims, while themselves going through their own quest for personal redemption.