This was a trainwreck of a book. I am not sure if I was braindead when reading the first one or if that one was significantly better than this.

There are so many things wrong with the book I will only touch on a few because neither you nor I have the patience to go through all of it.

The author doesn't trust us even with the slightest of deductive reasoning. Everything is pointed out in excruciating detail. There isn't a single conclusion, be it about the plot mystery or be it just about the emotional state of a character, we are allowed to get to on our own. And everything is repeated ad nauseam. Not only the torturously repeating explanations but also every time anything relevant is mentioned the entire history of that information and its relation to the current situation is repeated again. "This sounds like a raven like the one I saw 5 years ago when I bought ice cream from the guy with the weird haircut that probably went to that bad stylist 3 streets over where a man fell out of a window once..." and so on and so forth.
And it's with everything, every detail entails a detour again and again through the same information over and over.
It's like with every new piece of information the author believes it necessary to summarize the entire plot of the entire series up to that point.
This is obviously slightly exaggerated but it's not far off.

All the characters were only able to express emotions in extreme ways. From a face of agony to pure happiness and laughter to soul-shattering despair to excruciating horror. Nothing in between. And they switch between them all like changing a hat. It's very disorienting and takes any and all emotional impact.

Then we have the absurd endless monologues. And it's not only once and not only the evil mastermind either. There are probably a dozen monologues, each one pages-long, about how the baddy was only saving people and how compassionate and loving he was and all that clichée bullcrap. But the main character isn't one bit better. He is only being pushed around by literally everyone including a little girl all the while acting like he is the tough guy and at the same time constantly monologuing how he basically murdered all the people that have actually been killed by evil monsters. It's just tiring. I can't scrape together even a little bit of compassion for him anymore.

One last thing I want to mention is the plain logical inconsistencies everywhere. A mental asylum in which 4 people died of heart failure within days and no police investigation? really?
And that's the smallest of them but that's the kind of inconsistencies spread out throughout the entire book. A whole bunch of them are necessary to make the ridiculous plot work at all.

There are so many other really bad tropes you usually only find in Japanese live-action movies or Indian action movies I don't have the patience to list them all.

Especially towards the end, everything goes far beyond over-the-top and ridiculous.

I am done with this series and probably done with the author for a long time. ( )

This is the second book in this series and I'm sure no one that has been reading my reviews for the past 10 years is at all surprised that I haven't read the first book but instead went straight to the second one. In this one as I seem to have read in the description of the one that I skipped...the stakes again are high...even if Vincent Graves finds himself confined to an insane asylum, tracking down something that's killing patients. I loved Vincent Graves and all his quips. Sometimes it's hard to relate to Graves...like the time he denied that Cap'n Crunch is the most delicious cereal and is totally worth a little bit of mouth shredding. I personally agreed with him...but hey I'm the ones that reads series out of order...so what do I know? At any rate, Virdi has created a fantastic universe full of rich, interesting characters who are easy to root for. I found the "monsters" in this book scary, creepy and "darker" than those found in other books of the horror genre I have read. If you are a horror fan, I would certainly recommend an adventure with Vincent graves. ( )

This is a novel concept for a detective/mystery theme, and Virdi's creativity using the idea of a ghost who shares the body of a deceased person to find out "whodunit" gets it 4 stars. Where it loses half a star is the over-emphasis on hard-bitten, gritty detective tropes. A bit of help with the editor's pen may have made all the difference.

The detective wakes up in an insane asylum where the inmates have been dying unexpectedly. Vincent has to assess his new body, and he also finds that his boss, Church, has put him on this case for no reason he can understand. Which is fine - the noir detective always has that bit of grit.

Vince finds his former FBI partner from the previous book, Camilla Ortiz, an inmate in this asylum, too, and they are quickly partnering up to solve this case. And there are plenty of asides for the "geek" community in Vince's descriptions of his whereabouts that kept me highly amused and grinning.

The chaotic diety Lyshae makes an appearance here; my knowledge of Japanese mythos is sadly lacking to know if she is a real member of the ancient Japanese pantheon or simply an invented one. Either way, the idea of a chaotic neutral goddess is spot on, and the realizations that Vince has to make to ask for her help in solving this mystery are very well done. ( )

Grave Measures
(The Grave Report #2)
by R.R. Virdi
Wow, book 2 was just as awesome as the first book. Vincent is the main character that is a soul that inhabitants newly deceased murder victims until his time limit is up or he solves the mystery and kills the monster. The victim has to have died from supernatural or paranormal causes for Vincent to be on the case.
In the last book he dug himself out of a coffin. This book he wakes up in a straight jacket in an asylum. People have been dying frequently of heart attacks in the asylum. New creatures and new characters make this book really amazing! Fresh fantasy plot and memorable characters! Lots of enjoyment reading this! ( )