The Two Minute Rule (2006)

Robert Crais's thriller, first published in hardcover by Simon & Schuster in 2006 and read here in the Pocket Star paperback, takes its title from the bank robber's rule that every second past two minutes inside a bank raises the odds of being caught. Max Holman, finishing ten years of federal custody for bank robbery, learns on the day of his release that his son, a Los Angeles police officer, was killed the night before, and sets out with the former FBI agent Katherine Pollard to find out why. (Open Library)

Watches

Timex (unidentified model): Packing on the morning of his release, Holman is handed the card of a watch repairer by Wally, who is seeing him out of custody. On his wrist is a cheap Timex with an expandable band that has not worked in twenty years. It was his father's, and it stands where an eighteen-thousand-dollar Patek Philippe once did, a watch he stole from a car fence in his criminal days. Much later he glances at its frozen hands and wonders whether he wears it because time has no meaning (p. 240); by the last pages he has had it repaired and it keeps time pretty well (p. 430). The maker is named; the model is not. The Patek Philippe is remembered, not present.

Source text: Now, Holman wore the Timex even though its hands were frozen. The Timex had belonged to his father. (Robert Crais, The Two Minute Rule, scan cataloged as Pocket Star Books, 2007, p. 16; Internet Archive scan OCR)