サム ロイド（Sam Lloyd）は、イギリスの心理スリラー作家。ハンプシャーで育ち、2020年に『チェス盤の少女』（原題 The Memory Wood）を刊行した。英国のリチャード＆ジュディ・ブッククラブに選ばれ、海外でも翻訳出版されたこの作品は、チェス大会への参加中に誘拐された13歳の少女イリサが、森の地下室からの脱出を図る物語である。監禁場所を訪れる少年イライジャは、孤独な自分の友人になってほしいと願い、彼女を助けようとはしない。イリサがチェスで培った思考力を頼りに少年との駆け引きを続ける一方、外では捜査が進む。救いとなるはずの相手への依存が、別の危険にもなる構図から緊張を生み出している。2023年の The People Watcher では、人知れず他者を助けようとするマーシーの行動に、人々を罰しようとするもう一人の観察者が関わり、善意と介入の境界を揺さぶる。親子関係を扱う『善人による完全犯罪』（原題 The Bodies、2025年）では、息子マックスから人を死なせたと打ち明けられた父ジョゼフが、その将来を守ろうと遺体を埋める。しかし、帰宅した彼を待っていたのは、新たな遺体だった。一度の隠蔽で終わるはずの行為が繰り返される設定を通じ、子どもへの愛情が判断や責任をどう変えてしまうかを描く。ロイドの小説では、他者を助けたい、守りたいという気持ちが、恐怖や秘密と結びつき、登場人物を容易には抜け出せない関係へと追い込んでいく。
Sam Lloyd is a British writer of psychological thrillers who grew up in Hampshire. His debut thriller, The Memory Wood, appeared in 2020, became a Richard & Judy Book Club selection and was sold for translation abroad. Its protagonist, thirteen-year-old chess player Elissa, is abducted while attending a tournament and confined underground in a woodland setting. A lonely boy named Elijah discovers her, but his desire to keep her as a friend prevents him from seeking help. As a police investigation unfolds outside, Elissa must use her strategic intelligence to negotiate a relationship on which her survival depends. The possibility of rescue becomes entangled with a different form of dependence and danger. In The People Watcher (2023), Mercy quietly intervenes in other people’s lives to help them, until another observer who wants to punish people draws her into his activities. The premise unsettles the boundary between kindness, intrusion and control. The Bodies (2025), translated into Japanese as 善人による完全犯罪, turns to a father’s efforts to protect his son. When Max confesses to causing a death, Joseph Carver helps bury the body to preserve the future he imagines for his child. He returns to discover another body, making what he hoped would be a single desperate act the beginning of a continuing crisis. Across these stories, Lloyd develops suspense from relationships in which the wish to help or protect someone becomes bound up with fear and secrecy. His characters’ emotional commitments complicate their decisions and make escape from danger a matter of negotiating human attachments as well as confronting a crime.
