Room was loosely based on this story, Josef Fritzl's story, the story of an Austrian father who builds an elaborate dungeon under his house where he later imprisons his own daughter, who he repeatedly rapes eventually fathering seven children by her during her captivity, three of which he brings up to live with him and his wife, three which are left to live in the dungeon (never knowing anything outside of their tiny dungeon world), and one which dies.Īs one might imagine the story is bizarre. A little investigation proved that my memory is still functioning well. She briefly described the plot which sounded eerily similar to a true life scenario I had read about in the recent past. To enquire about my varied and affordable book publicity services: Ī friend recently recommended a book titled Room.

To enquire about joining my VIP book reviewers team: Thanks so much for reading my review! To follow more reviews, be alerted to awesome online author events and HUGE book giveaways and more come on over to. I see mixed reviews of this one and I think some will really love it but it just didn't really do it for me. I am keen to see if there are other books written about this heinous case that I may try in the future. Whilst really keen to know this story and the awful case that it was, I have to admit I struggled to want to keep picking this one back up again. I found some of it was irrelevant to the telling and lost me as a reader somewhat along the way. The book goes into a lot of detail, if you love that in a book you might well enjoy this. 3 months later after picking up the book at different times and reading more I realised that the book for me just lacked something I had loved in other true crime lacked the sense of tension and true horror that should have been there. So I bought the book and settled in for a good read. The entire case completely fascinated and disturbed me at the same time. He and his wife Gail divide their time between New York City, the Catskill Mountains and London. He has appeared on television and radio programs all over the world, including ABC- 20/20 Dateline NBC, Fox News, Current Affair, BBC World, and A&E Biography. His first book, a biography of Bill Graham, was published in 1981, and he published For I Have Sinned, his first book of true crime, in 1998. He freelanced at several English newspapers, then in 1981 moved to New York, where he joined the staff for News Limited and freelanced for publications including Newsweek and the New York Post. Glatt left school at 16 and worked a variety of jobs-including tea boy and messenger-before joining a small weekly newspaper. He has more than 30 years of experience as an investigative journalist in England and America. John Glatt's Secrets in the Cellar is the true story of a crime that shocked the world.Įnglish-born John Glatt is the author of Golden Boy Lost and Found, Secrets in the Cellar, Playing with Fire, and many other bestselling books of true crime. It was the first time the nineteen-year-old girl had ever gone outside―and soon, the truth about her background, her family's captivity, and Josef's unspeakable crimes would come to light. Then, in 2008, one of Elisabeth's children became seriously ill, and was taken to the hospital. One died in infancy―and the other three were raised alongside Elisabeth, never to see the light of day. There, she would eventually give birth to a total of seven of Josef's children. But only Josef knew the truth about Elisabeth's disappearance…įor twenty-seven years, Josef had imprisoned and molested Elisabeth in his man-made basement dungeon, complete with sound-proof paneling and code-protected electric locks. Throughout the years, three of Elisabeth's children mysteriously appeared on the Fritzls' doorstep Josef and Rosemarie raised them as their own. He seemed to be living a normal life with his wife, Rosemarie, and their family―though one daughter, Elisabeth, had decades earlier been 'lost' to a religious cult. Josef Fritzl was a 73-year-old retired engineer in Austria.

Elisabeth fritzl now 2021