Roger Torrey (1901-1946) was a US writer who produced one novel and many short stories for the pulp magazines. 

Torrey was born in Cadillac, Michigan. His parents divorced and his mother, Rose, moved him and his younger sister, Ellenor, to Klamath Falls, Oregon. Rose Torrey’s second husband, Harry W. Poole, built and owned theatres in the Klamath Falls area.

After high school, a short stint with the Royal Canadian Rifles, and studies at the University of Oregon, Roger put his musical abilities to use in his step-father’s theatres. Torrey began playing keyboards during the silent film era, then took the position of Musical Director at the Liberty Theatre in the latter part of 1920, and later managed the Chiloquin Theatre.

Torrey spent much of the 1920s rambling up and down the west coast from job to job, spending much of the time in Los Angels and San Francisco. Towards the end of the decade he married and became the owner/operator of a confection store. By 1932 the marriage and business had failed, and Torrey moved to New York City, where he married again, to a fellow writer. 

In Frank Gruber’s The Pulp Jungle he recalls meeting a very drunk Torrey one morning on the street and could not tell if he got an early start drinking, or was carrying on from the evening before. Gruber added, “Personally, Roger Torrey was a tough little guy, as hard as the characters he portrayed so well in his stories.“

Sometime in 1945 Roger and his wife moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida.  On January 11th, 1946 Roger told Helen he did not feel well, asked for a cup of tea, and lay down on the couch. After sipping the tea, according to fellow writer Steve Fisher, he turned to her and said: "Hold my hand, Mommy, because I'm going to die." She held his hand until the end. Cause of death: acute alcoholism.

See http://www.thrillingdetective.com/trivia/roger_torrey.html for more details of Torrey's life and work.

See http://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=18674 for a review of Torrey's Hannigan and Irving story series

Bibliography

42 Days for Murder (1938)