Uel Key
Uel Key was the pseudonym of British author Samuel Whittell Key (b. 1874), who wrote short stories regarding Prof. Arnold Rhymer, the Spook Specialist. These various tales appeared within Pearson's Magazine in 1917 and 1918, though later collected in The Broken Fang and Other Experiences of a Specialist in Spooks (1920). A novel concerning Prof. Rhymer, entitled The Yellow Death, was published the following year.
Key was a very hit-and-miss author. At best his work displays a mad creative verve, at worst, the poorest of cliched hackwork. Indeed, his inability to string a logical and grammatically correct sentence together has earned him a following amongst readers who revel in awful prose. Unless you are an admirer of bad writing it is perhaps only worth seeking out his story 'The Broken Fang' online.
The printed dedication to his son who died in battle during the Great War which features in the book "The Broken Fang" perhaps explains why Key was so racist.
The Broken Fang and Other Experiences of a Specialist in Spooks was reviewed in the The Occult Review (June 1920) on page 367.
Prof. Arnold Rhymer, M.D.
Key's reoccuring occult detective, Prof. Arnold Rhymer, was an English medical doctor and lecturer who worked closely with Scotland Yard on various cases involving the unusual, weird and/or exotic. Portrayed as a tall, lean, agile and young man, Rhymer was a ghostbuster who depended on his Holmes-like deductive mind and cunning wits to defeat supernatural opponents.
Bibliography
- 1920 The Broken Fang and Other Experiences of a Specialist in Spooks (London: Hodder & Stoughton)
- 1921 The Yellow Death: (A Tale of Occult Mysteries) Recording a Further Experience of Professor Rhymer the "Spook" Specialist (London: Books Limited)