Secrets In The Cellar by John Glatt

Josef Fritzl was a 73-year-old retired engineer in Austria. He seemed to be living a normal life with his wife, Rosemarie, and their family,although one daughter, Elisabeth, had decades earlier been lost to a religious cult. Throughout the years, three of Elisabeth's children mysteriously appeared on the Fritzls' doorstep; Josef and Rosemarie raised them as their own. But only Josef knew the truth about Elisabeth's disappearance...
For twenty-four years, Josef had imprisoned and molested Elisabeth in his man-made basement dungeon, complete with sound-proof paneling and code-protected electric locks. There, she would eventually give birth to a total of seven of Josef's children. One died in infancy and the other three were raised alongside Elisabeth, never to see the light of day.
Then, in 2008, one of Elisabeth's children became seriously ill, and was taken to the hospital. 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.

If this book had been a fiction book my review would have run along the lines of "unbelievable","unrealistic" and "impossible".Why would this grown up woman not have held this old man captive with the help of her grown son until this monster got so hungry that he would have given them the code to open the door?This would be from me,completely ignorant of how monstrous this old man really was.I am sure that Elizabeth knew that he would never have given in should such action been taken.Besides she believed the poison gas story he made up while I knew it was not true right at the beginning of the book.

This was my first book from the Kindle Store and I waited so long.The amount of times I typed in "Secrets In The Cellar" only to be told over and over again "Your kindle is registered to a third party".But Secrets In The Cellar was well worth waiting for.I love John Glatt books.I love his simplistic style of writing.I have read reviews where people complain about that but true crime stories are complicated and traumatic enough without having to resort to dictionaries and my imagination.I would buy any John Glatt book just because it is written by him.The same applies to books written by Ann Rule,Kathryn Casey,Diane Fanning,Jerry Bledsoe and Aphrodite Jones.But that's just my taste.

This book had background/childhood information,crime and investigation details.I did read another book on this case and it does not compare to this one by John Glatt.My only problem is the Kindle edition did not have pictures and I usually really look forward to the photographs.So I did a "google" search and found quite a few so that turned out well.


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Secrets in the Cellar

or for South African readers who want to find out more then Kalahari Books is the link for you.

Here are some more details on this book

Country: United States of America
Format: Mass market paperback
Publisher: St. Martin's True Crime
ISBN: 9780312947866
Publication date: March 2009
Edition: illustrated edition
Pages: 248
Illustrations: Illustrated

I read this in May 2009 and besides not having photos on the Kindle version I would definitely recommend reading this book.

The Life I Survived by Maria La Bella

This is the true life story of Maria La Bella and details the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of her biological father for a period of 21 years.The abuse started as she remembers from the age of 3.

This book is extremely disturbing with very graphic details of the sexual abuse.If you are very sensitive it is better not to buy this book as there is no way of reading this book and avoiding these sexual details.The book is practically just full of the abuse.The memory of this book will stay with you for a while.

It is written for very easy reading and you will immediately be able to tell that the victim herself wrote this book.I got a bit irritated with the spelling mistakes namely the word "to" always being spelt as "too" all throughout the book and wondered who had done the editing.But my irritation was at a high level probably due to the content of the book which really had an impact on me.I was left with a very bad taste in my mouth.Strangely enough this book did not evoke feeling of sympathy as I could not believe that she would stay quiet for this long even as an adult.I am not very positive about this book but still feel that maybe it is the details itself that has evoked this response in me.I was and still am totally disgusted that this kind of thing can happen.

I also was not very impressed with the fact that this book cost more than the other true crime books which I usually buy and to top it off was very thin with 123 pages of large print.And the capital letters in some parts of the book made me angry.Again please do not take my word for it maybe you should find out for yourself as I think my reaction to this book is abnormally negative.

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I read this book in January 2009