Arthur Somers Roche

In 1921, Governor Thomas G. McCrea of Arkansas was so impressed with Roche's novel "A Day of Faith". He declared November 21, the day the book was released, a state holiday.

She passed away in 1915 around the time of the birth of their son James Jeffrey.

By 1910 Roche was contributing short stories to national magazines and a few years later published "Loot" (1916), his first novel. America's involvement in World War One put Roche's writing career on hiatus while he served as a captain with the US Army Military Intelligence Division. After the war Roche became one of the more prolific authors of that period. In all, before his untimely death at age fifty-one, Roche wrote twenty-three novels, scores of short stories and worked on two plays. Roche would often use his adopted home state of Florida as a backdrop for his fast paced mystery thrillers.

In 1910 Roche married Ethel Kirby Rowell of New York City.

Within two years he grew tired of the profession and in 1906 entered the field of journalism with the New York World.

Roche attended The College of the Holly Cross in Worchester and later Boston College, from which he graduated with a law degree in 1904.

Mystery thriller writer Arthur Somers Roche was born in Somerville, Massachusetts. He was the son of James Jeffry Roche, a prominent Irish-American author, journalist and diplomat and Mary Frances Halloran, a native of Massachusetts who died of pneumonia in 1885, some months shy of her thirtieth birthday.

Arthur Somers Roche (April 27, 1883 – February 17, 1935) was an American author of novels, short stories, and two plays.