The Margery Allingham Short Mystery Competition

The Mystery remains box-shaped, at once a prison and a refuge. Its four walls are, roughly, a Crime, a Mystery, an Enquiry and a Conclusion with an Element of Satisfaction in it. Margery Allingham

Every year since 2014, the CWA and the Margery Allingham Society have jointly held an international competition for a short story of up to 3,500 words.

Our mission is to find the best unpublished short mystery, and not only that, but one which fits into Golden Age crime writer Margery Allingham’s definition of what makes a great mystery story.

Entries are invited from all writers, published or unpublished, writing in English.

The 2024 competition is now open.
The deadline is 29 February 2024.

Win fantastic prizes

The winner receives a generous cash prize of £500 and two tickets for CrimeFest 2025.

Open for entries

Entry costs £18 and the competition is open from now until 6pm GMT Thursday 29 February 2024.

See Margery’s all-important definition at the top of this page and below
Read the rules here
Enter here

Promote the competition

Help us champion short stories and crime writers by spreading the word with this A5 flyer.

What you need to know

The international Margery Allingham Short Mystery Prize is a competition open to all – both published and unpublished authors from all over the world – and is for short stories written in English of up to 3,500 words. All that we ask is that: the story was originally written in English; has not been previously published anywhere; has not been shortlisted for this competition; or won any other competition.

Please follow Margery’s definition of a mystery to be in with the best of chance of winning the prize.

“The Mystery remains box-shaped, at once a prison and a refuge. Its four walls are, roughly, a Crime, a Mystery, an Enquiry and a Conclusion with an Element of Satisfaction in it.”

The way a submitted story matches this definition is awarded greater weighting in the scoring than any other criteria.

Entry costs £18 and the prize for the winner is £500.

Enter here

Announcements for Margery Allingham Prize 2024

Longlist: Online and at the CWA Conference in April, date to be confirmed
Shortlist: Online in early May, date to be confirmed
Winner: mid May, to be confirmed
All announcements will appear on this website.

Closing date for the 2024 competition is 6pm GMT 29 February 2024.

Please address any queries to the CWA Secretary: secretary@thecwa.co.uk or Competitions Coordinator: comps@thecwa.co.uk .

The Margery Allingham Prize is a joint initiative between the CWA and the Margery Allingham Society.

How to write a winning story

We asked Martin Edwards, the inaugural winner of the CWA/Margery Allingham Short Story competition for 6 great tips and here they are:

Read the great short stories (not just crime fiction) and ask yourself what makes them great
Don’t kid yourself that writing a short story is much easier than writing a novel
Think about the effect you want the story to have on the reader
The opening needs to arrest attention
The end must leave the reader with a sense of satisfaction
In between the beginning and the end – don’t waste a word

Find out more about Martin here and about Crafting Crime, his online crime-writing course here.