Seiko Barcelona Football Club Chronograph Black Dial Black Leather Men's Watch SNN269

WORLDTEMPUS- 27 August 2012

Modern and even contemporary novelists have not remained immune to the lure of the watch. For example, beyond James Bond's book and on-screen watches of note, there have also been other brands and watches mentioned by Ian Fleming.

"To judge by the glittering pile, this had been, or was, a rich man. It contained the typical membership badges of the rich man's club - a money clip, made of a Mexican fifty-dollar piece and holding a substantial wad of banknotes, a well-used gold Dunhill lighter, an oval gold cigarette case with the wavy ridges and discreet turquoise button that means Faberge, and the sort of novel a rich man pulls out of the bookcase to take into the garden - 'The Little Nugget' - an old P.G. Wodehouse. There was also a bulky gold wristwatch on a well-used brown crocodile strap. It was a Girard-Perregaux model designed for people who like gadgets, and it had a sweep second hand and two little windows in the face to tell the day of the month, and the month, and the phase of the moon. The story it now told was 2:30 on June 10th with the moon three-quarters full." Surprisingly, it was Ian Fleming who wrote this in 1957's "From Russia with Love."
In her successful series of books about medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta, Patricia Cornwell has been known to mention Breguet, Blancpain, Rolex and Breitling. For example in "Scarpetta," Dr. Scarpetta's niece Lucy is engaged in a discussion with New York police prosecutor Jaime Berger. "Lucy caught Berger looking at it and said, 'Maybe you're familiar with illumination technology? Gaseous tritium, a radioactive isotope that decays and causes the numbers and other markings on the watch to glow so that they're easy to read in the dark? I bought it myself. You buy your Blancpain yourself? Or was it a gift?' Berger replied, 'It was a gift from myself. A reminder that time is precious'."
In "Port Mortuary," Dr. Scarpetta is at Dover Air Force Base. She has been asked to appear on CNN and is deciding what to wear. "General Briggs, John, as I refer to him when we're alone, wants me in an Airman Battle Uniform, or better yet, Air Force blues, and I disagree. I should wear civilian clothes, what people see me in most of the time when I do television interviews, probably a simple dark suit and ivory blouse with a collar, and the understated Breguet watch on a leather strap that my niece, Lucy, gave me."

Fictional police with luxury tastes
The most recent watch mentions I've come across have been in Jo Nesbo's "The Redeemer" from 2009, which included mentions of a Seiko SQ50, Rolex, and almost a dozen references to a mysterious watch that is not revealed until the last few pages.
This is the part that will interest watch enthusiasts most: Nesbo's protagonist, Harry Hole, tells a police colleague that he has just had the A. Lange & Söhne timepiece identified that had belonged to another colleague. "The world's most expensive watches have a tourbillon system with a frequency of twenty-eight thousand vibrations an hour. This has the effect of making the second hand look as if it's flying around in one movement. And with a mechanical escapement the ticking sound is more intense than in other watches."
"Wonderful watches, Rolex".
"The Rolex brand was added by a watchmaker to disguise what kind of watch it really is. It's a Lange 1 tourbillon. One of a hundred and fifty specimens. In the same series as the one I got from you. The last time a Lange 1 tourbillon was sold at auction the price was a little under three million kroner."

Author and enthusiast
The final quote goes to author and well-known lapsed watch enthusiast William Gibson in 1999's "All Tomorrow's Parties." Gibson has been known to happily discuss watches on Twitter with those who ask.
"Fontaine picks up the watch, affords himself a quick squint through the loupe. Whistles in spite of himself. 'Jaeger-LeCoultre.' He unsquints, checking; the boy hasn't moved. Squints again, this time at the ordnance markings on the case back. 'Royal Australian Air Force, 1953,' he translates. 'Where'd you steal this?'
"Nothing.
"'This is near mint.' Fontaine feels, all at once, profoundly and unexpectedly lost. 'This a redial'
 
"Nothing.
"Fontaine squints through the loupe. 'All original?'
"Fontaine wants this watch.
"He puts it down on the green pad, atop the worn symbol of a golden crown, noting that the black calf band is custom-made, hand-sewn around bars permanently fixed between the lugs. This work itself, which he takes to be either Italian or Austrian, may have cost more than some of the watches in his tray. The boy immediately picks it up.
"Fontaine produces the tray. 'Look here. You want to trade? Gruen "Curvex" here. Tudor "London," 1948; nice original dial. Vulcain Cricket here, gold head, very clean'."
More than just props?
So how do we, as readers or watch enthusiasts of all types, find out why an author mentioned a particular watch? We simply ask them, of course. I have done this twice, writing to David Malouf about a brief off-hand Breguet reference in "The Conversations at Curlow Creek."
"…though it was to the Breguet watch in their master's waistcoat-pocket that their own was synchronized, which was the heart of their own little universe and to whose ticking their ear, their attention, their every gesture was distantly attuned."
And I asked Jo Nesbo in person. To my disappointment, Nesbo confessed that he couldn't remember why he put the watch mentions in.
As for David Malouf, read for yourself in the picture below.

For further watch mentions, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published a short story called "The Man with the Watches" in 1898. However, serious watch enthusiasts should really take part in the chase of Allen Kurzweil's "The Grand Complication," at which point we circle back to Breguet: a wealthy and eccentric bibliophile named Henry James Jesson III hires New York public library employee Alexander Short to search for the missing tenth object in his cabinet of curiosities. Short discovers that the missing item is none other than Breguet's Marie Antoinette…