Devils in Exile (2010)

Chuck Hogan's 2010 novel follows Neal Maven, an Iraq veteran adrift in Boston, into the crew of Brad Royce, a fellow veteran whose "sugar bandits" rob drug deals and destroy the product. Royce seals the brotherhood at a steakhouse dinner with a gift, and the gift comes back in the book's last act. (Open Library)

Watches

Oris Big Crown: Maven buckles on his gift at the table, admiring the oversize steel case, the fluted telemeter ring and the Swiss movement showing through the crystal back, and checks it on a later job while waiting out go time in the mud. After he is betrayed and held captive he sees his Oris on the wrist of his jailer, the Jamaican Mr. Leroy; when he returns and the two fight beside a burning mattress, the sight of the watch on the hand at his throat changes everything. The text names the model as a Big Crown Telemeter Chronograph, retail two thousand dollars, and gives no reference.

Source text: Royce passed out three black boxes labeled oris. Three identical timepieces. "I hear any of you call it a watch, I'm taking it back." (Chuck Hogan, Devils in Exile, scan cataloged as Scribner, 2010, p. 120, where the scan sets the box lettering in small capitals; the model is named across pp. 119 to 120, and the watch returns on pp. 233, 253 and 305; Internet Archive scan OCR)

Oris Big Crown: Before the steaks arrive Royce slips off his own new Big Crown Telemeter Chronograph and passes it round, insisting it is a timepiece and not a wristwatch. His lieutenant Termino pulls back a sleeve to show he already has one, and Royce hands identical boxes to Maven, Glade and Suarez.

Source text: Maven took it in his hands and felt the new leather of the strap, the fluted top telemeter ring of the oversize face, then turned it over and viewed the Swiss gears working inside the see-through crystal back. (Chuck Hogan, Devils in Exile, scan cataloged as Scribner, 2010, p. 120; Internet Archive scan OCR)