Yes, they were lots of fun ("bloodcurdling and dramatic" here are features rather than bugs, I should have said). You've got me wanting to reread them. Also, if I'm remembering one episode rightly, there's Napoleon-worship. It's baffling to me how many people adored Bonaparte. (Well, a lot of the people who get really gooey about him lived too late to experience the Napoleonic Wars, which is a bit of explanation. Also, emperor-worship and sentimentalization, and envy: who wouldn't want to be that powerful and wealthy?)

The characters in Conan Doyle's story get all hero-worshippy as well, and ACD is skilled enough that I couldn't tell if the emotion was coming from him or from the first-person narrator. (I like to think ACD was too conservative and skeptical to buy into Napoleon-worship, but then again: fairies at the bottom of the garden.)

*snort* "The great northern diver." That's beautiful.