Paper Castles (1990)

Paula Jacobs's 1990 novel opens with the unsolved 1930s murder of the film star Zelda Banky and moves to the funeral of Preston De Witt Granville, founder of The Tattler, Hollywood's daily trade paper, which passes to his widow Maddy. Cal Mooney, the man who once beat her and walked out with her mother's earrings, is back on her money and in her newsroom. (Open Library)

Watches

Raymond Weil watch: Ebullient in Ray-Ban Aviators, Cal saunters into The Tattler's newsroom like a man who has the world by the throat and checks his brand-new eighteen-carat Raymond Weil so as not to be late for his first appointment with Sid Robbins, then polishes his new beige Bally loafers on his chinos. Maddy had given him plenty of money and told him where to shop, with a warning against the racetrack-tout look. The maker is named; the model is not.

Source text: He checked his brand-new, eighteen-carat Raymond Weil wristwatch. Didn't want to be late for his first appointment with Sid Robbins. (Paula Jacobs, Paper Castles, scan cataloged as Windsor Publishing, 1990, pp. 190 to 191, the word "wristwatch" breaking across the page; the excerpt at the front of the book sets out Cal's history with Maddy; Internet Archive scan OCR)