The Glencairn Glass Crime Short Story Competition

 

The Glencairn Glass Crime Short Story Competition Returns in Association 

with Bloody Scotland

The official glass for whisky, the Glencairn Glass, is once again raising a toast to crime fiction with the return of its popular annual Crime Short Story Competition.

 Launched in partnership with the Bloody Scotland International Crime Writing Festival, the competition invites both experienced and novice writers from around the world to submit an original crime story of under 2,000 words. The criteria this year is that the protagonist must be from Scotland. Entries close on 31 March 2026.

The overall winner will receive £1,000, publication of their story on the Bloody Scotland website, and will be offered a guest appearance at the Bloody Scotland Festival in September 2026. The runner-up will be awarded £500, with both winning stories also published on the Glencairn Glass website (whiskyglass.com).

The Glencairn Glass is no stranger to the world of Scottish crime fiction. It is produced by the award-winning Scottish family glassware business Glencairn Crystal and the company has celebrated and supported the Bloody Scotland Crime Writing Festival since 2020 with its Glencairn Glass sponsorship of both the McIlvanney Prize for the Scottish Crime Book of the Year and the Bloody Scotland Debut Crime Novel of the Year awards.

 Previous winners:

Since its inception, the competition has drawn hundreds of entries from both established and emerging voices in crime fiction worldwide. For many writers, it has been a career springboard.

Allan Gaw, runner-up in 2022/23, has since achieved major success, winning the 2024 Bloody Scotland Debut Novel Prize and securing a seven-book publishing deal with Polygon. Frances Crawford, the 2022/23 winner, has signed a two-book publishing deal with Penguin and sees her first novel hit the shelves in 2026. The competition’s inaugural winner, Brid Cummings (2021), went on to sign with a UK literary agency after finishing her first psychological suspense novel which has since been published by Audible.

 The Judges

For the first time, this year’s judging panel includes six of the UK’s leading crime book influencers* alongside Kirsty Nicholson, Design and Marketing Manager at Glencairn Crystal.

Commenting on the competition, Kirsty said: “We’re thrilled to launch the fourth year of our short story competition with our official whisky glass, the Glencairn Glass, as we continue to support and celebrate the world of crime fiction. Each year the calibre and creativity of the entries exceed our expectations, and we’re excited to discover the new voices and gripping stories that this year’s competition will bring.”.

 How to enter:

All short story entries must be submitted at www.whiskyglass.com/crime-short-story-competition. The competition closes at midnight on Tuesday 31st March 2026. The winner and runner up will be announced in the summer. Bloody Scotland’s Festival Director, Bob McDevitt, said: “We are excited to read a new crop of stories, and hope that the competition provides a stepping stone in developing the careers of some talented new voices”.

 For further details about the competition please visit: www.whiskyglass.com/crime-short-story-competition  

Conan Doyle Estate to collaborate with Simon and Schuster

 

Arthur Conan Doyle © Conan Doyle Estate

Simon & Schuster UK has entered into an official collaboration with the Conan Doyle Estate on a programme of new and backlist titles following on from their recent collaboration, Holmes & Moriarty by Gareth Rubin.

The partnership will see the creation of “new works based on the characters created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle”, and some backlist titles, both inside and outside the Holmes canon, “repackaged and republished”. All titles will be officially endorsed by the Conan Doyle Estate.

To launch the publishing programme, Simon & Schuster UK will be publishing a short-story anthology entitled Sherlock, which will feature an introduction by Stephen Fry, along with new stories from Kate Mosse, Anthony Horowitz, SA Cosby, Sarah Perry, Joe Hill, Vaseem Khan, Janice Hallett, Abir Mukherjee and Steve Cavanagh. Sherlock will be published in autumn 2026.

Katherine Armstrong, deputy publishing director for Crime and Thriller Fiction, agreed the deal with Jon Wood at Rogers, Coleridge and White for world all-language rights including audio. Atria, part of Simon & Schuster US, will also be publishing the new works and distributing the backlist titles.

Armstrong said: “I am particularly delighted to be working with the Conan Doyle Estate on these projects. Not only do I – and everyone at Simon & Schuster – share the Estate’s aim to create a lasting legacy of Conan Doyle’s works for many generations to come, but the Sherlock Holmes stories were some of my favourites growing up. I could not be more thrilled to be collaborating with the Estate on a full programme of backlist and new projects to take us to at least 2030”.

“Doyle’s influence on the crime-fiction genre has been immense and the character of Sherlock Holmes has seen and inspired many iterations over the past 140 years, but Doyle was also an intrepid traveller, a soldier, a campaigner for justice, and a scientist, among other things, so there is a wealth of material to explore. I am incredibly excited by the brilliant authors who have already agreed to write new short stories for our Sherlock anthology, and we are also working on a new official biography of Conan Doyle to publish on the anniversary of his death in 2030. There are many exciting projects in the pipeline that I can’t wait to share with existing fans and to introduce to new readers!”

Richard Pooley from the Conan Doyle Estate said: “The Conan Doyle Estate’s mission is to further the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and keep a torch shining on him and his characters for generations to come. Nearly 140 years ago, Conan Doyle created one of the world’s most famous fictional characters. To our knowledge, Sherlock Holmes is still the most depicted character in print, film and TV. But it was Conan Doyle’s genius and significant involvement in so many aspects of life we must also remember. As he himself wrote: ’I have had a life which, for variety and romance, could hardly be exceeded.’  The Simon & Schuster official collaboration with the Conan Doyle Estate will help to bring Sir Arthur out of the shadow of Sherlock Holmes and to continue to tell the life story and work of this remarkable renaissance man.”

Jon Wood added: “Arthur Conan Doyle was a renaissance genius in so many ways – a crime writer, a science-fiction novelist, a politician, a thinker and a visionary. He was also the creator of unarguably the most successful fictional character of all time – Sherlock Holmes. This new relationship with Simon & Schuster worldwide is an unparalleled opportunity to rediscover Arthur and revitalise all his works. I’m so grateful to be part of these efforts along with the Estate, Katherine Armstrong and the whole team around the world.” 

 

Writing No Less The Devil by Stuart MacBride

Normally it can be quite difficult for me to identify the exact genesis of a story, but that’s not the case with No Less the Devil. Years and years ago, back when I was young and fresh faced… Well, that’s a lie. Back when I was slightly less haggard and grumpy. That’s more like the truth. Anyway, way back then I was asked to write a short story to be read out on Radio 4. I, being an international man of mysteries, was on my way to South Africa at the time to do a lovely wee festival there and a bit of a book tour, and as it was one of those overnight flights I decided to fulfil my short-story obligation on the plane. I never sleep on these things anyway – why not put the time to good use?

So, between Heathrow and Johannesburg I sat in my seat and came up with what I thought was a nice little family tale with a crime-fiction twist. Emailed it off when I got to my hotel, then forgot all about it.

Just before I was supposed to get on the plane back to the U.K, having enjoyed a very nice time in lovely South Africa, thank you very much, i got an email from the BBC saying that my nice little family tale was far too dark to broadcast on the radio!' with more than a whiff of ‘what’s wrong with you?’ about it.

Right.

In if they didn’t like that one (which has never been published, by the way), then I would write them something else on the plane home. And somewhere over Zambia or the Democratic Republic of the Congo, I had an idea. And I wrote a fragmented short story about a little girl called Lucy and her little brother and a very naughty dog called Mr Bitey. Which seemed to go down OK. Not too dark for the delicate sensibilities of the British radio-listening public. And that was that.

Or it should’ve been.

The trouble was that Lucy really intrigued me, not in a ‘thinking about it every day fashion’, more a ‘niggling away at the back of my skull’ kind of thing. As the years went on I’d come to from a dwam, and find I’d been staring out the window for a while, pondering what Lucy would be like when she grew up. Would she be happy? Would she have changed? What would she be doing now? And what would happen if she joined the police…

This is what we shall now refer to as: Tab A.

Slot B came into being before the first lockdown was announced, but it was a vague and fuzzy slot without clearly defined edges, and then the pandemic hit. And then all the stories of VIP lanes, and massive contracts worth hundreds of millions doled out by sleazy idiots to their avaricious cronies. Cronies with no experience supplying the things they were now being paid massive sums of tax-payers’ money to supply. Things that often didn’t work and cost twice as much as they should have.

It's been clear for years that we live not in a real, genuine, un-bought-and-paid-for-by-entities-and-individuals-who-do-not-have-our-best-interests-at-heart democracy, or even a kleptocracy (though it sometimes feels that way), but an ineptocracy. Where we’re governed by people wholly unfit for the task, whose only qualification is that they’re privately educated and sound a bit posh.

Which made me wonder – what if all the staggering displays of ineptitude on daily display weren’t just because these people had the intellectual heft of what could be dug from your average tumble dryer’s fluff filter after doing a load of socks and pants? What if they were part of a pattern? What if they were part of the plan?

Hell, what if they were the plan. What if the only reason these people had, to claw their way up the greasy political flagpole, was to enrich people exactly as venal and useless and overprivileged as they were?

At which point Tab A slid neatly into Slot B, and No Less the Devil was born.

Then all I had to was write it, which is a different story entirely…

No Less The Devil by Stuart MacBride (Transworld Publishers) Out Now 

We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell. It's been seventeen months since the Bloodsmith butchered his first victim and Operation Maypole is still no nearer catching him. The media is whipping up a storm, the top brass are demanding results, but the investigation is sinking fast. Now isn't the time to get distracted with other cases, but Detective Sergeant Lucy McVeigh doesn't have much choice. When Benedict Strachan was just eleven, he hunted down and killed a homeless man. No one's ever figured out why Benedict did it, but now, after sixteen years, he's back on the streets again - battered, frightened, convinced a shadowy 'They' are out to get him, and begging Lucy for help.It sounds like paranoia, but what if he's right? What if he really is caught up in something bigger and darker than Lucy's ever dealt with before? What if the Bloodsmith isn't the only monster out there? And what's going to happen when Lucy goes after them?

Margery Allingham Short Mystery Competition Long List

The Margery Allingham Short Mystery Competition Long List has been announced. 

Congratulations to everyone who made the list! 

A Crystal Clear Crime - The Glencairn Glass Short Story Competition

 The Glencairn Glass launches its first ever crime short story competition with the theme:

“A Crystal Clear Crime”

For the past two years, the world’s favourite whisky glass – The Glencairn Glass – has featured as headline sponsor of the prestigious McIlvanney and Bloody Scotland Debut crime-writing prizes, celebrating the finest in Scottish crime writing talent. This week The Glencairn Glass is building on this creative collaboration by launching its very own crime short story competition, in partnership with Scottish Field Magazine.

The Glencairn Glass is looking to celebrate up-and-coming literary talent through this exclusive competition from October to December.

The competition opens for entries on 20th October and runs until 31st December, inviting all budding crime writers to build their stories around the theme: ‘A Crystal-Clear Crime’ in no more than 2000 words.

The judging panel for the inaugural competition will comprise Deborah Masson, 2020 winner of the Bloody Scotland Debut Crime Novel of the Year with her book ‘Hold Your Tongue’, Peter Ranscombe, Scottish Field’s drinks columnist and author of the historical thriller ‘Hare’, as well as Glencairn’s marketing director Gordon Brown, who has written eight crime novels with his latest, ‘Thirty-One Bones’, written under the pseudonym Morgan Cry. Gordon is also one of the founding directors of the Bloody Scotland International Crime Writing Festival.

Gordon Brown commented: “We’re very excited to be launching the Glencairn Glass crime short story competition, supported by the team at the Bloody Scotland International Crime Writing Festival along with the Culture and Business Fund Scotland, working with Scottish Field. We are delighted to invite both experienced and novice authors, alike, to take a stab at entering (excuse the pun!) and wish all entrants the best of luck.”

Three prizes will be available for the winning trio of authors: the first prize winner will receive £1000, whilst the two runners up will each receive £250. All three winners will also receive a set of six bespoke engraved Glencairn Glasses to enjoy their favourite dram with. The overall winning entry will be published by Scottish Field in spring 2022 as well as on The Glencairn Glass website.

All short story entries must be uploaded at www.whiskyglass.com/crime-short-story-competition with the competition closing at midnight on the Friday 31st December 2021. Details can also be found at www.scottishfield.co.uk. The winners will be announced in March 2022.

CWA Margery Allingham 2021 Short Mystery Competition – Winner Announced

 

The world-famed Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) has announced the winner of its Margery Allingham Short Mystery Prize.

Camilla Macpherson beat strong competition with her short story, ‘Heartbridge Homicides’.

Camilla lives in The Hague in the Netherlands. Her debut novel, Pictures at an Exhibition, which revolves around the National Gallery during the Second World War, was published by Random House in 2012 and translated into Dutch, German and Polish. Camilla is currently working on a detective story set in the Netherlands in 1940. She has won a number of awards for her short stories and travel writing. 

The competition celebrates the classic mystery story, and entries had to adhere to Allingham’s definition of a mystery. The great Golden Age author summed it up as: “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 Margery Allingham Society, set up to honour and promote the writings of the great Golden Age author whose most well-known hero is Albert Campion, works with the CWA to operate and fund the writing competition. One of the UK’s most prominent organisations for the support and promotion of crime writing, the CWA was founded in 1953. Each year the competition attracts many entries from the UK and overseas.

Dea Parkin, Secretary of the CWA, said: “We are in awe of the quality and number of entries we received this year. We’ve witnessed a huge resurrection in the popularity of mystery stories in the pandemic, thanks in part to the popularity of Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club and authors like Elly Griffith's with The Postscript Murders and Robert Thorogood who created the popular BBC murder mystery series, Death in Paradise and wrote The Marlow Murder Club. This short story competition is a fantastic way of building a writer’s craft, and profile, in the mystery genre.”

Camilla will receive £500 and two passes for the international crime writing convention CrimeFest in 2022.

The announcement has come during National Crime Reading Month, an initiative promoted and supported by the CRA. Online events as well as blog posts and videos on the 2021 theme of emergence and escape are featured on the website www.ncrm.co.uk throughout June.

 

The CWA Margery Allingham Short story Mystery Competition Short List 2021

 

The Margery Allingham Short Story Mystery Competition Short list has been announced.

The mission is to find the best unpublished short mystery – one that fits into legendary crime writer Margery’s definition of what makes a great 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.”

The Shortlist is as follows –

Antony M Brown	For Laura Hope Coincidence leads a young man on the trail of girl called Laura for a wartime spy story involving Dunkirk and the language of chess.
Chris Curran	All the Little Boxes A killer wants to commemorate their successes. But what if murder is hereditary?
Camilla Macpherson	Heartbridge Homicides A story set in TV soapland. The breezy narration never falters as the charm of solving a crime creeps over the soap’s fan.
Hazell Ward	As Dead as Dodo Who would have thought that not removing hearing aids could be so revelatory? Or the importance of which switch turns out the lights?

 The winner will be announced on 1 July 2021.  Congratulations to all the nominated authors. 

CWA Margery Allingham Short Mystery Competition

 

The world-famed Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) is on the hunt to find the best unpublished short mystery story.

Entries are being invited for the 2021 CWA Margery Allingham Short Story competition, with just weeks before deadline closes on 26 February for the international writing competition.

The Margery Allingham Society, set up to honour and promote the writings of the great Golden Age author whose well-known hero is Albert Campion, works with the CWA to operate and fund the writing competition. Each year the competition attracts many entries from the UK and overseas.

Dea Parkin, Secretary of the CWA, said: “This year promises to be hotly contended. Editors and agents have predicted mystery stories are a strong trend in 2021, with Richard Osman’s soar-away hit debut, The Thursday Murder Club, a key touchstone for publishers. This short story competition is a fantastic way of building a writer’s craft, and profile, in this genre.”

Entrants are asked to focus on specific elements to match Margery Allingham’s definition of a mystery, which is: “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.”

Dea said: “It’s easy to see why authors like Robert Thorogood are so popular as readers are craving proper whodunnits in the pandemic. Thorogood created the TV hit show, Death in Paradise, and his latest novel The Marlow Murder Club is another example of this trend. Real life is so uncontrollable and daunting at the moment, but these ‘cosy’ stories provide some reassurance as they offer clues, suspects, great characters and locations, with a satisfying resolution and the mystery solved.”

The CWA anthology, Vintage Crime, is edited by the 2014 winner of the Margery Allingham prize – acclaimed crime writer Martin Edwards. Shortlisted authors for the prize have also found wider success, such as Christine Poulson, whose short story ‘Accounting for Murder’ featured in the CWA anthology, Mystery Tour, and went on to be shortlisted for the CWA Short Story Dagger.

Submissions have a limit of 3,500 words. It costs £12 to enter. The winner receives £500, a selection of Margery Allingham books, and two passes for the international crime writing convention CrimeFest in 2022. Being shortlisted for this renowned competition also brings attention and prestige.

The longlist, shortlist and winner will be announced by the CWA online in spring/summer.

For rules and to submit an entry, go to Short Story Competition on the CWA website. The deadline is 6pm on 26 February 2021.

https://thecwa.co.uk/debuts/short-story-competition

Photo courtesy of the Margery Allingham Society.

CWA Margery Allingham Short Mystery Competition

Entries are being invited for the CWA Margery Allingham Short Story competition. 

This year, the competition has changed the weighting of its scoring system to match Margery Allingham’s definition of a Mystery. Entrants are asked to focus on specific elements to match the definition: “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.” 

Entries should therefore feature the elements: the crime, the mystery, the enquiry and at least a partly satisfactory conclusion, ideally in that chronology. 

The submissions have a limit of 3,500 words. It costs £12 to enter and the winner walks away with £500, a selection of Margery Allingham books, and two passes for the international crime writing convention CrimeFest in 2021. Being shortlisted for this renowned competition also brings attention and prestige to the writing CV. 

The winner will be announced in early June at CrimeFest 2020 – when the long-list of the CWA Debut Dagger and other Daggers are also made public.  

For the rules, and to submit, go to Short Story Competition on the CWA website. The deadline is 6pm on 29 February 2020. 

Professional feedback on stories before submission at the CWA Mini Critique is also available for any writing up to 4,000 words, including short stories. The service is open until 19 Dec and then from 2 January 2020 and promises a speedy turnaround. 

For more details, contact secretary@thecwa.co.uk before 19 December 2019 or after 2 January 2020. 

The Lindisfarne Prize 2020

The Lindisfarne Prize for Debut Crime Fiction (‘The Lindisfarne Prize’) is a literary prize which recognises outstanding writing in the genre of crime or thriller fiction, sponsored by the author L J Ross and in association with the Newcastle Noir Crime Writing Festival. It is open to all new writers who are from, or whose work celebrates, the north of England and who have not previously had a crime or thriller story published in any form. 

Entrants must submit a short story of no more than ten thousand words or the first two chapters and a synopsis of their work in progress, to be considered.

The winning entry will be awarded a prize of £2500 to support the completion of their work, as well as free editorial and mentoring services from a local independent publisher and funding towards a year’s membership of industry associations. Entries are open from 31st May 2019 – 31st March 2020 and the winner will be announced at a ceremony forming part of the Newcastle Noir Crime Writing Festival in May 2020.

More information including terms and conditions can be found here.

CWA’s Margery Allingham Short Story Competition to Continue

© Margery Allingham Society

The Margery Allingham Society has agreed with the Crime Writers’ Association that the popular short mystery competition will run for at least another five years, until 2024. The Society, set up to honour and promote the writings of the great Golden Age author whose well-known hero is Albert Campion, works with the CWA to operate and fund the writing competition that opens for entries in the autumn on the CWA’s website and closes every February.

Each year the competition attracts many entries from the UK and overseas and the winners are announced at CrimeFest, the international crime writing convention, in May. The short story can be up to a generous 3,500 words long and must echo Margery Allingham’s definition of a mystery.

This year the winner was Ray Bazowski, with ‘A Perfect Murderer’. Ray wins £500 and two passes to CrimeFest for 2020. Ray says: ‘Aspiring writers are routinely told to write what they know. Such advice is less plausible for writers of murder mysteries, especially those who take the point-of-view of murderers, or at least I hope so. In my case, what knowledge I have of the subject is speculative, and entirely incidental to my regular job of teaching politics at York University in Toronto.’ Ray is considering writing a novel next.

Runner-up with ‘Decluttering’ was Rosie de Vekey, a teacher who lives with her family in east London.  As she has a passion for acting, she came to writing through plays and has written a number of pieces for Network Theatre, Waterloo. As a teacher and mum, she often writes children's fiction too. Decluttering is one of a collection of stories Rosie has written, set in the near future, on aspects of mental health.

© Margery Allingham Society

Next year’s competition will emphasise the definition of mystery by Margery Allingham with more points allocated to how well the story matches it, and, just to reinforce the point, it will be renamed the Margery Allingham Short Mystery competition.

Barry Pike, Chair of the Margery Allingham Society, says: ‘We’re very happy to be able to continue our co-sponsorship, along with the CWA, of our short mystery competition for another five years.’

Linda Stratmann, Chair of the Crime Writers’ Association, says: ‘We are delighted that the CWA’s very rewarding association with the Margery Allingham Society is going to continue. We congratulate Ray and Rosie and look forward to helping other talented mystery writers with their careers in the years to come.’

Love is Murder

Best First Novel
Courting Murder, by Bill Hopkins
Souljourner, by D. L. Marriott
Perfidy, by Michele May
In her Shadow, by August McLaughlin
 
Best Traditional/Amateur Sleuth
Where Did You Die, by Patricia K. Batta
The Trashy Gourmet, by David Ciambrone
A Small Hill to Die On, by Elizabeth Duncan
The Lightkeeper’s  Legacy, by Kathleen Ernst
Dabblers, by Kathryn Flatt
The Lost Artist, by Gail Lukasik

Last Wool and Testament, by Molly MacRae
Emma Winberry and the Evil Eye, by Helen Osterman
Murder in the Round, by Patricia Rockwell (an Amelia Barnes Acoustic Mystery)
Crosscurrents, by Powell Smily, with Susan Smily and Honora Finkelstein

Best Thriller
Hitman: Damnation, by Raymond Benson
The Black Stiletto: Black & White, by Raymond Benson
The Ninth Day, by Jamie Freveletti
Company Orders, by David J. Walker

Best Police Procedural
Portrait of Murder, by Rob Riley
The Sons of Jude, by Brandt Dobson

Best Paranormal/Sci-Fi
Walk-In, by Honora Finkelstein and Susan Smily
When the Moon is Gibbous and Waxing, by Angela Myers

Best Historical
Archie Meets Nero Wolfe, by Robert Goldsborough
Death at Woods Hole, by Frances McNamara
The Bootleggers Nephew, by Sara Wisseman

Best Suspense
A Bitter Veil, by Libby Fischer Hellman
Moonlight for Maggie, by Karen L. Syed

Best Series
Get Fluffy, by Sparkle Abbey (the Pampered Pets mystery series)
Thy Will be Done, by Richard M. Davidson (the Lord's Prayer mystery series)
The Janus Reprisal, by Jamie Freveletti (Robert Ludlum's Covert One series)
Killerfind by Sharon Woods Hopkins (the Rhetta McCarter mysteries)
Trickster’s Point, by William Kent Krueger (the Cork O'Connor mystery series)
The Watch, by Jerry Peterson (the AJ Garrison crime novels)

Best Short Story
"Harry's Fall From Grace" by Luisa Buehler, prequel to the Grace Marsden mystery series
"The Love Nest", by Sharon I. Cook, in The Legend Of Judgment Rock & Other Mystery Stories
"Capital Partners", by Libby Fischer Hellman, in Writes of Spring
"Early's Christmas", by Jerry Peterson, in Stories of the Season anthology
"The Case of the Extra Ingredient", by Mary Welk, in Hot Crime, Cool Chicks

The Lovey Awards will be given out as part of the 14^th annual Love is Murder Conference that is due to take place between 1-3 February 2013 in Chicago.  The awards will be presented during the banquet on the Saturday evening. 

Congratulations to all the nominees!

Hat tip to Janet Rudolph and Mystery Fanfare for the information.