I suppose many people who read this blog, will have first heard about the spear and shield story from Ace Attorney. I first heard it from Saint Seiya of all places...
A new Houjou Kie book, and that of course means I'm there on the front row on the release day. This novel is not related to any of her previous books by the way, and if I remember correctly, it's her first novel via publisher Kadokawa too. I've of course been a fan of the former member of the Kyoto University Mystery Club since her debut novel Jikuu Ryokousha no Sunadokei ("The Hourglass of the Time-Space Traveller. Especially these last two, three years, her release schedule has become quite busy with a lot of regular short stories being serialized in all kinds of magazines, but to be honest, it's still her long novels that manage to impress me the most each time due to the insanely dense clewing and plotting going on in her books. So when it was announced her newest book would be released in March 2026 (in fact, it was released a week before this review goes up), I knew I'd be getting the book immediately. Especially as the title really interested: In Japanese (and Chinese), the characters for "shield" and "spear" form a compound word meaning "contradiction", originating from the tale of an invincible spear and impregnable shield (which of course, contradict each other's existence).
It's not surprising that Houjou came up with a detective (duo) that represents the "unstoppable spear" and a criminal that creates an "impregnable shield": in most of Houjou's works, she plays with the idea that detectives and criminals are in fact two sides of the same coin, and most of the detective characters in her books have some shady background to them, from Ryuuzen Yuuki in Kotou no Raihousha ("Visitors on the Remote Island") being forced into a detective role despite him actually planning a crime, Kiryuu being the hotel detective and enforcer for the Amulet Hotel, which caters to criminals exclusively and Kuroba being the ghost of the "Perfect Crime Contractor" finding himself becoming a mentor in detection in Shoujo ni wa Mukanai Kanzen Hanzai ("An Unsuitable Perfect Crime for a Girl"). In When the Shield Meets the Spear, we see similar dynamics. Himi "Himiko" Asuka is a specialist who can be reached via certain social media apps and she helps people, most often people who end up murdering someone, with the cover-up. She instructs her clients how to plant specific false pieces of evidence and clues, that will lead the police to a false solution, for example making it appear it was an accident. Himiko is a master at reading situations and adapting to them, which is also reflected in her thinking: she can instantly see how the police, or even Kusatsu and Kirishima will seize up a situation, and advise the criminal as to what clues to plant in order to point away from the truth. She therefore also has to act in a detective in a way, as she has to deduce how her opponents will react and build her defences around that. Meanwhile, Kusatsu and Kirishima form a formidable duo as the members of the K&K Detective Agency because they handle different parts of the detective work: Kusatsu is without a doubt the brain: with the loss of the use of his legs, he mainly acts as an armchair detective nowadays, building his theories based on the reports made by Kirishima, who investigates the crime scenes/interviews the suspects for him. More often than not though, Kusatsu will manage to solve the crime before Kirishima has completed his report. Meanwhile, Kirishima handles the brawn or "violent force" of the duo. Kirishima had always excelled physically, and his time as a low-time criminal in the Philippines only strengthened that side of him. Kirishima is not afraid to play dirty in order to win, which includes doing things that... aren't really legal, but hey, sometimes it's necessary to break into a house or restrain somebody to find evidence, right? The K&K Detective Agency being detectives who can play dirty, and Himiko being a criminal who thinks like a detective, are the ingredients for a great premise.
When the Shield Meets the Spear is a novel, though you could consider it a short story collection, as we follow the K&K Detective Agency and Himiko as they cross paths across three adventures. In the first story, K&K Detective Agency are asked by the police to investigate a strange death that occured in the home of a former boxer. The boxer had been holding a small party at his house to celebrate the engagement of two childhood friends. While everyone but one friend was out of the house for grocery shopping, this remaining friend died in the large bathroom, which houses its own hot spring bath. The house was completely locked from the inside, with the key being found lying next to the victim in the bathroom. The reader learns immediately it was indeed the boxer who committed the crime and immediately after the deed, he requested the help of Himiko to ensure the crime would appear as a simple "slipped in the bathroom" accident, though his initial attempt at disguising his crime, before he called Himiko, unfortunately led to a contradiction that led to the police asking K&K to look into the case.
What is interesting about this story is that it shows immediately that When the Shield Meets the Spear is very reminiscent of a Columbo-style story in set-up, even if it's not really an inverted detective story. To explain in more detail: in When the Shield Meets the Spear, Kusatsu usually manages to solve the initial murder early on, seeing through the first attempt by the murderer to disguise their crimes. In series like Columbo and Furuhata Ninzaburou, it's often the "Columbo is getting close, let's do something" follow-up attempt at fooling the police that leads to their arrest , but in this book, this is the point where the story really starts. After Kusatsu's first deductions, we'll learn Himiko is already messing with the crime scene, altering or destroying crucial pieces of evidence or planting false clues, that lead to new solutions (that of course point away from the real murderer). These are very entertaining and captivating parts: it shows how you can change chains of deductions and their outcomes completely by altering small points, and often it only takes a small nudge to lead you away from what you know is actually the truth. What is fun here is that Houjou plays the game in a fair manner here: the reader is always made aware of a key term or word in Himiko's instructions to the culprit, which allows the murderer to completely overturn Kusatsu's initial (correct!) deductions, often just by introducing one fake clue. From there, we see Kusatsu and Kirishima react again, having to penetrate through this second layer of defense and it's often here were Kusatsu's brain isn't enough: Kusatsu and Kirishima too have to play a little bit dirty to break through the illusions created by Himiko.
Because of that, we get a lot of battles that go back and forth in When the Shield Meets the Spear, though moment-to-moment deductions are a bit simpler than we have seen in her other work. For example the initial locked room murder trick in this first story really relies on a very simple trick, but then Himiko changes something about the crime scene, which renders Kusatsu's deductions improvable to the police, so then K&K Detective Agency has to come up with something else again. This constant adapting to a new situation is something we have seen a lot in Houjou's work, but because the three chapters in this book are mostly self-contained, I can't help but feel the scale of the deductions in these stories are a bit shorter/simpler than what we might be used to. This first story does have some great moments as we see both parties going far to reach their respective objectives. Because the criminal only has limited time/means to mess with the crime scene, Houjou manages to present this "what false trail will they create with what false clue" mystery as a fair mystery, as this false solution is properly foreshadowed. Still, because the stories are mostly self-contained, you don't have really moments where an early planted clue is used to shake up things much later in the story, as you'd see in some of Houjou's other books, though she does manage to plant some lore clues throughout the stories.
The second story starts with great premise: the president of a health product company and two of his managers were on a business trip on Thursday in Osaka, with Friday being a holiday. The president left his employees early in the evening in Osaka and hasn't been heard of since. Which is a bit odd, but still, it was a long weekend, so nobody really worried about him. On Monday morning, just as everyone was wondering why he was absent today, a large package from Osaka was delivered to the company and inside they found... the director's dead body! This second story is a lot trickier than the first story right from the start. While the first story starts with the reader being shown who the murderer is, making the first part of that story (until Kusatsu's initial deductions) a howdunnit, this second story keeps the murderer's identity a secret at first, making the first part (again, until Kusatsu's first deductions) both a howdunnit and whodunnit. From there, Himiko starts messing with the crime scene again, neutralizing Kusatsu's deductions and forcing him to find a new way to capture the culprit despite the changed circumstances of the crime and the initial pieces of evidence proving his theory being rendered useless. The puzzle behind why the murderer sent the victim's body in a package to Tokyo is pretty good even as is, and the added "confusion" created by Himiko only makes it more fun. This second story also builds to a surprisingly dramatic finale, with the second half of the story revealing there were pretty complex things going on behind the scenes, though it can be argued whether the build-up to some of these developments is fair enough.
The final chapter is the longest and the most ambitious too. K&K Detective Agency is asked to look into the murder of a writer (who also happens to be son of the former head of the Metropolitan Police Department's Criminal Affairs Division). The victim was found dead in his own locked study at home in Kotakara Village, near the mountains of Okutama. Kotakara Village is a very small, isolated community, and the village itself can only be reached via one path. On the night of the murder, the whole village was engaged with their local festival, which celebrates children, giving them the freedom to do whatever they want that night. The few dozen of people in the village were all either in the village hall to attend to the festival or being on guard duty at the village entrance point. There were also two outsiders present, a police officer who was giving a safety presentation for the children and a journalist. Interviewing all the people in the village however lead to the strange conclusion that every single person in the village was accounted for during the time of the murder. So who could've killed the writer?
This is written as the grand finale and it definitely has the huge twists and reveals you'd expect of one... which is why it feels a bit disappointing this is chapter three of the book. In-universe, K&K Detective Agency has been active for about two years, in which Kusatsu and Kirishima crossed Himiko's path more often, but for us readers, these events all start about two-hundred pages/two stories in, which makes some of these events feel far too huge at this point of the book, like a season finale, even though we're just halfway into the series. Of course, it might have been difficult to "extend" this season before we got this finale (the book is fairly long as it is now, while unless you're a light novel series, it's hard to plan a series ahead because nobody is guaranteed a sequel), but I can't deny I really wish there had been more build-up as a series, to gain maximum satisfaction from this finale.
This story is mystery-wise definitely the trickiest of the whole book: Himiko creates some great misdirection early on in regards to the crime scene, and we have multiple false solutions here (with proper clue trails) that will fool the reader/detectives. At times, the story will even feel a bit unfair, though surprisingly, Houjou then offers a fair solution to the unfair situation, which basically undoes the initial unfairness. The mystery is thus full of twists and turns, with K&K Detective Agency being forced to alternate rapidly between attack and defense turns, and that results in some suspenseful moments despite a lot of the story just being... people explaining their deductions. The way K&K eventually resolves the situation is clever, and makes great use of the setting and the respective roles of both men, making them equal members in this partnership, even if Kirishima is always addressed as "Kusatsu's assistant." The setting of Kotakara Village is also pretty interesting, with a local festival and rituals that are used well in terms of setting up and supporting the mystery plot, though I do think this setting could've been exploited better with more pages: Kotakara Village is the kind of place you'll see in the Toujou Genya or Kindaichi Kousuke novels and with some more development, could easily have been the setting for a whole novel, but here things feel a bit hasty/underdeveloped, which is a shame.
I do have to admit that as much as I enjoyed this book (and that's a lot!), the fact Tate to Hoko is basically set-up as an interlinked short story collection rather than a "normal" novel, means we don't really see the insane plotting and clewing going on in Houjou's other novels, and that's a bit disappointing. While most of her novels have her detectives dealing with several problems in sequence, her novels usually have her at her best, with later problems/crime scenes/situations often requiring clues planted much earlier in order to solve them, with some of her best work basically being a web of clues from start to finish. Tate to Hoko is far simpler, with most of the information necessary being contained to each chapter. The concept of the book is nonetheless great though, with the constant transformation of the facts and the crime scene creating a fluid mystery story that allow for fun back and forth deductions. The duo of Kusatsu's brains and Kirishima's brawn is also great, with especially the times when after a series of Kusatsu's "clean" deductions, Kirishima is allowed to play dirty. I do hope this becomes a series, because even though I thought this was a great mystery, I do feel some of the things done here might've worked better if she had more time(pages/books) to develop those ideas. I also wonder whether Houjou could also write one single story/one single case with the same premise of someone constantly tampering with the crime scene/clues to create false solutions.
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