Mrs Eloise "Ellie" Mentary, freelance journalist and amateur sleuth, is a massive fan of two things - beautiful places and puzzles - so her books combine the two!  

The mystery tours are designed to help you get to know some lovely destinations whilst adding a bit of a mental challenge at the same time. If you like escape rooms, crosswords or logic puzzles you will really enjoy the brainteaser element to the tours. During the pandemic Mrs Mentary put together mystery tours for her family when nothing was open and they really enjoyed exploring their local area. In these cost conscious times the books offer some free (once you've bought the book!) entertainment which will hopefully get people enjoying the outdoors and opening their eyes to some of the beauty on their doorstep. 

For all clues you are looking for some sort of object or place which will help you eliminate one of the suspects. The clues are somewhat cryptic with certain words having double meanings. To help you significant words are italicised. You will start to learn certain phrases that mean "anagram" or "contained within" etc so look out for those. Also remember that words may have different meanings in different contexts. If you get stuck on a clue the best thing is to take a photo of the relevant place or object and go back to the clue once you have eliminated most of the suspects.

 The tours are generally within two and three miles long and take around one and a half to two hours if you were to do them from start to finish without a break. However, there are lots of lovely shops, pubs and restaurants along most of the routes so you may well want to make a half-day or day of it. The books also contain a list of places to eat, shop and visit in each location. Places do close or change periodically so if anything is out of date please do let Mrs Mentary know so she can update for future editions.

At present there are two titles in the series, Essex and London, but please check out Amazon.com, Instagram, Twitter (X) and this webpage for information on future titles.

Purchase on https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mrs-Mentarys-Mystery-Tours-2-book-series/dp/B0D9G52M8T