Richard Toronto

Richard Toronto is an American-born writer and science-fiction historian best known for his detailed chronicling of the controversial “Shaver Mystery” and its central figure, Richard S. Shaver. Born in Sonoma, California, Toronto earned a BA in Journalism from CSU Sacramento. He taught photography to patients at Napa State Hospital for the Criminally Insane and worked as a newspaper reporter at a small Bay Area daily.

Toronto’s work is rooted in pulp-era science fiction history, and the preservation of esoteric literary subcultures. His narrative blends biography, cultural criticism, and archival research. He has documented the legacy of fringe sci-fi long before such sub-genres became academically studied.

His detective fiction reflects this pulp era fascination. His first novel, Hollywood and Vain, introduced Alexander “Buster” Blade, a former silent movie child actor turned private detective in postwar San Francisco. Upon returning from military service, Blade sets up a detective agency and hires Chinatown exotic dancer Paloma Liu Tsong as his office assistant. When murders begin to target his old Hollywood acquaintances, Blade must navigate complex social dynamics and personal ghosts to solve the case. The city plays a vivid role, blending postwar noir atmosphere tinged with Hollywood McCarthyism. The story explores post‑WWII social dynamics, race, and the emerging detective‑fiction tropes in early 20th century California.

Toronto followed up with a sequel: Half Past Satan, a fast‑paced atmospheric novella that pulls the reader into occult noir and a world where Nazi technology meets Ouija boards. It’s ideal if you enjoy eclectic detective stories flavored with pulp adventure and eerie speculative fiction. It merges hard‑boiled detective pulp with weird sci‑fi/ fantasy, full of 1940s noir slang, tongue‑in‑cheek humor, and escalating weirdness. The novel is often compared to classic detective stories with a retro‑fantasy twist, with echoes of philosophical ideas around cults, mysticism, and psychological manipulation. A Goodreads reviewer calls it “curiouser and curiouser”—a sci‑fantasy disguised as a detective yarn.