The Margery Allingham Short Mystery Competition

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Our mission is to find the best unpublished short mystery, and not only that, but one which fits into Golden Age crime writer Margery Allingham’s definition of what makes a great mystery story.

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

2025 longlist

Title	Author
The Human Imperative	Michael Bird
Desmond Astonishes	Stacy Brown
Best Served Cold	Ajay Chowdury
The Treasure Hunter	Jane Corry
Only Forward	Hayley Dunning
You Think You Know Someone	Leigh Gorelik
Unsupervised Dead Women	Helen Gray
Dinosaur	Emma Johnson
Tinkerbell Is Dead	Linda Mather
Your Time’s Up	Laila Murphy
An Ideal Murder	Emma O’Driscoll
A Woman of No Consequence	Laure Van Rensberg

Dates for your diary

12 April – 2025 longlist announced at the CWA Northern Symposium
Early May – 2025 shortlist announced online
31 May – 2025 winner announced at the public NCRM 2025 Launch at Bodies in the Bookshop, Cambridge
Autumn 2025 – 2026 entries open