Hughes had, on the face of it a remarkable, varied and highly successful career, so why then should he be a rather uninteresting, even a dull figure to read about? Is it because of some lack of personal "colour" or because he really belongs in the pages of Raymond Chandler, not in books of factual biography? In spite of all the legends which grew up around him, in spite of his achievements (quite genuine, too) as an aviator, his enormous wealth and his powerbrokering in Hollywood, his "romances" (the euphemism in those censored times for "affairs") with Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, Ava Gardner, Jane Russell, Ginger Rogers, etc., etc., there seems to have been some canker gnawing stealthily at the core of his world.
Hughes's secretive life in his last decade has often been described as "mysterious", but can it be that the public had simply lost interest in him anyway?