ON 28 AUGUST 1984, JOSEF FRITZL, DRUGGED HIS TEENAGE DAUGHTER ELISABETH WITH ETHER AND IMPRISONED HER IN A SOUNDPROOF UNDERGROUND BUNKER, BEHIND EIGHT LOCKED DOORS. Four twenty-four years, he raped and abused her, never letting her or three of the seven children she bore him out of the dark, windowless cellar. Getting to the heart of one of the most horrific cases of abuse ever recorded, Allan Hall has reconstructed a monstrous personally from new interviews with psychologists, neighbours, colleagues and friends who know Fritzl, as well as the insight of his own chilling confession. The picture of Fritzel that emerges, and the extraordinary lengths he went to in order to conceal his activities and the dark nature of his past in Nazi Austria, is a truly heart-stopping record of a man so cruel he inflicted almost inconceivable suffering on his own children.