Just looked up W's chosen literary agent. His company deals in several genres of writing. This one would be very suitable for W's book:
'General fiction'
(or possibly 'Fantasy')
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Edit: I've just been reading about the below topic, with reference to a civil case where the same computer expert was brought in to review electronic documents, and was able to show that they had been amended. I wonder if further penalties (or a request to dismiss the case) could follow any finding of delberate changes / deletions of evidence?
The
spoliation of evidence is the intentional, reckless, or negligent withholding, hiding, altering, fabricating, or destroying of evidence relevant to a legal proceeding.[1] Spoliation has two possible consequences: in jurisdictions where the (intentional) act is criminal by statute, it may result in fines and incarceration (if convicted in a separate criminal proceeding) for the parties who engaged in the spoliation; in jurisdictions where relevant case law precedent has been established, proceedings possibly altered by spoliation may be interpreted under a spoliation inference, or by other corrective measures, depending on the jurisdiction.
The spoliation inference is a negative evidentiary inference that a finder of fact can draw from a party's destruction of a document or thing that is relevant to an ongoing or reasonably foreseeable civil or criminal proceeding: the finder of fact can review all evidence uncovered in as strong a light as possible against the spoliator and in favor of the opposing party.
The theory of the spoliation inference is that when a party destroys evidence, it may be reasonable to infer that the party had "consciousness of guilt" or other motivation to avoid the evidence. Therefore, the factfinder may conclude that the evidence would have been unfavorable to the spoliator
(Ref. wiki)
In the civil case I looked at, the defendants’ motion for sanctions was partly granted including that:
the plaintiffs shall pay
the attorneys’ fees and costs incurred by the defendants in establishing the spoliation and obtaining relief.
