Ben Reese is a university archivist, who was a behind-the-lines scout in WWII. The death and disaster in Watches Of The Night does grow out of American history - the scientific Tech Teams America and Britain sent into Nazi territory during (and after) WWII to gather science and technology, plus the dedication of postal workers in US dead letter offices who spend years (literally) trying to deliver defaced or incorrectly addressed mail.

The plot of Wataches is woven from both. A damaged package with unsavory contents, lost in 1944, gets hand delivered in 1961 to the American widow of a Scottish paratrooper killed at the battle of Arnhem, and is tied, unexpectedly, to Ben Reese, who's shown in flashbacks leading a Tech Team in 1945 behind-the-lines to a German scientific installation - then coming to grips, in 1962, with his memories of that mission and his thirst to avenge the dead.

The two threads lead to murder in Scotland in 1962, as the story moves from Ben's Ohio university to Woodstock, New York, and Lexington, Kentucky, to Scotland and to Tuscany, while Ben does his work as an archivist restoring a pioneer mural in Lexington and searching for a very rare book in northern Italy.

It's his wounded horse, Max, though, who helps Ben climb out of his closed quiet tightly-contained self and get past the death of his wife. Max and the widow who got the grisly package.