Obits in Brief

Daniel Jarque

The footballer Daniel Jarque, who died on 8 August of heart failure at the age of 26, was the captain of the Barcelona side Espanyol. The defender was found in his hotel room in Florence following a session at the club's pre-season training camp.

Born on 1 January 1983, Jarque joined Espanyol at the age of 12, making his debut in 2002. He was part of the team that won the Copa del Rey, the Spanish equivalent of the FA Cup, in 2006, and lost on penalties to Sevilla in the Uefa Cup final the following year. Last month, he was made Espanyol's club captain. He also helped Spain win the European under-19 championship in 2003.

Last week the Arsenal captain Cesc Fàbregas, a former team-mate of Jarque in the Spanish under-21s, dedicated his second goal in Arsenal's 6-1 win at Everton to Jarque, hoisting aloft a shirt bearing Jarque's name and Espanyol shirt number, 21.

Thierry Jonquet

Thierry Jonquet, who died in Paris on 9 August aged 55, was a French writer who specialised in crime novels with political themes. Born in Paris in January 1954, he wrote more than 20 novels, including Le bal des débris, Moloch and Rouge c'est la vie.

His most recent and best known novel outside France was Mygale (2003), which was published in English translation as Tarantula in 2005 (Serpent's Tail) and is currently being adapted for the cinema by the Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar. The novel concerns a plastic surgeon with dirty secrets; one critic praised it as "great art in nightmarish darkness"; another said "it reads like an unholy collaboration between Sade and Sartre", while a third described it as "a poisoned bonbon of a novel... I was hooked by the third page."