The Policy (1998)
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Patrick Lynch's thriller, first published by Dutton in 1998, is set inside ProvLife, a New England life insurance company about to move into healthcare coverage. Alex Tynan, an actuary on an entry-level salary, grows suspicious of the rapid rise of her lover Mark Ferulli and of figures on her screen that refuse to tally; then the executive Michael Eliot is found dead in what looks like a household accident, leaving a hidden fortune. (Open Library)
Watches
- Patek Philippe watch
- At a gathering where Alex is helping herself to food, a man in a cheap polyester suit that smells of perspiration introduces himself as David Mullins of Ocean State Savings Bank. As he eats she is surprised to see a sleek gold Patek Philippe under his shirt cuff, and the man beside them, Witney, sees it too. The watch returns as a clue: sitting in her car Alex remembers that by the end of the evening it was no longer on his wrist, a watch she puts at twenty thousand dollars at least on a man whose clothes were worth perhaps two hundred (pp. 300 to 301), and she later counts it among the signs of money that had to be spent furtively (p. 358). The maker is named; the model is not.
Source text: Alex watched him bring a piece of food to his mouth and was surprised to see a sleek gold Patek Philippe watch under his shirt cuff. Witney saw it too. (Patrick Lynch, The Policy, scan cataloged as Dutton, 1998, p. 126; Internet Archive scan OCR)