If you're a fan of the '70s TV classic Fawlty Towers, which starred John Cleese as a surly, possibly unbalanced, hotel operator, you absolutely have to read Graham McCann's Fawlty Towers: The Story of the Sitcom (Hodder, 336 pages, $17).

It sounds straightforward enough, but [Greg Iles] layers on the complications. The husband is mistaken about the lover's identity and is blaming the wrong man for ruining his marriage; his medical partner is involved in an insurance scam; the wife's actual lover is part of the sheriff's department contingent that's trying to defuse the hostage situation before lives are lost.

Even as she came to know that [Ted Bundy] was a murderer, [Ann Rule] couldn't quite reconcile what he'd done with the Ted she knew: an intelligent, compassionate, caring man.