There is no consensus on diet strategy here. However, the resources below are generally applicable. The discussion can get a bit dry, but if you can incorporate the knowledge more broadly, its easy to work into any diet approach.

Lyle McDonald is a prolific writer in the field. I've used his Rapid Fat Loss diet approach to drop fat like nobodies business. Hands down the single most effective short-term blitz diet out there for fat loss. It's miserable though, and you can't do it for very long without messing yourself up metabolically and hormonally. I now know what low Test levels feels like because of RFL. (Comes back quickly though)

Basics of Fat loss: http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/the-fundamentals-of-fat-loss-diets-part-1/

Muscle Growth Basics: http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/muscle-growth-and-pos-workout-nutrition/

My favorite combined diet/lifting approach for lifters past noob-gains phase. http://www.leangains.com/2010/04/leangains-guide.html. This is the guy (Martin Berkhan) whose initial research on Intermittent Fasting in 2006 started the avalanche of shitty knock off mainstream fasting diets that water down the science. I find this particularly effective if hitting new maxes gets you motivated to go to the gym. Other lifting strategies make me dread going to the gym, but this one makes me excited. Thus its 100x more effective because I actually go.

The last and most important point: The best diet is the one you can actually do. A perfect diet that you can't turn into a lifestyle that you can execute every single day is a useless diet. Make it as easy to do as possible. That's why I like IF diets.