And that may be no bad thing, because Ian Mackersey's reprinted Jean Batten: The Garbo of the Skies makes it clear there is not much about her to be liked.
Rotorua-born, 1930s aviation legend, first person to fly from England to New Zealand; that's the bit we all know.
That she was a reclusive, self-absorbed loner, driven by an obsessed mother and generally a person few warmed to, is the other side, so well documented in Mackersey's book.
Batten's life was shaped and controlled from an early age by her mother, Ellen - her parents' marriage ended soon after her dentist father's return from World War 1 - and Jean and Ellen lived together for more than 40 years, Jean ''so totally possessed by her mother that when she died she became a lost soul''.
Not that Batten didn't enjoy the opposite sex, all the more so if they offered financial support, for which they never expected to be repaid. Of the infatuated line of men Batten used to further her aviation ambitions, very few were ever publicly thanked or even acknowledged.
Earlier, during their pre-fame years together, quite how mother and daughter survived financially, is something of a mystery, since neither ever considered securing paid employment. But as the book reveals, so much of the Jean Batten story has been carefully airbrushed by the pair to extend the mythology ''of awesome perfection'' and disguise the truth.
Any illusions Jane Gardner Batten, as she was christened, was ever a loved New Zealand hero are quickly shattered within the opening pages.
As a young boy, the author met her, or rather shared a train carriage with her. The ''strikingly attractive, dark-haired woman in her mid-20s . . . who ignored my mother's cheerful 'good morning', cutting her dead with a haughty glance . . .'', who addressed the guard in a ''superior manner . . . with an affected accent'' obviously left an impression.
Mackersey has cast wide and deep in his meticulous research, but acknowledges ''I came to distrust the verdicts of many of those who claimed to have known her . . . for in truth she revealed only a tiny part of herself to any of them . . .''
Never more so in her final years. As reclusive as ever, she died as the result of a dog bite in a foreign land, buried in a pauper's grave, the famous, once feted aviator missed by no-one.
But there is no denying her prowess as a pioneering woman of the air.
While Batten flew in the shadows of Amy Johnson and Amelia Earhart, Mackersey argues her overall airmanship, preparedness, consistency and exceptional navigational skills earned the right to regarded as the best of that trio. And perhaps that's the way we should remember her.
- Peter Donaldson is ODT deputy news editor.
