Woe to the son who needs his father to be a hero. After all, how many men can be? But for Zachary Lazar, whose father's shady land deals led to his 1975 gangland-style murder, the gap between filial fantasy and reality must feel achingly wide. In fact, the traumatic event led Lazar, author of the 2008 novel "Sway," to treat his father's life -- and death -- in semi-fictional terms. In "Evening's Empire: The Story of My Father's Murder," he tries to channel the thoughts of a dead man -- to grasp what spurred him to do business with a man possessing dangerous ties to the mob.

In the early 1970s, Ed Lazar, a Minnesota accountant, went to work for Ned Warren Sr., an Arizona real estate magnate who, after serving time in Sing Sing, headed west to make a killing selling land to retirees and servicemen stationed abroad. Whether he owned the arid lots that he proffered is unclear. But their uninhabitable nature is confirmed.

Warren was toxic; that much is certain. What Lazar struggles to understand is why his dad -- a seemingly law-abiding square -- got involved with him. What he uncovers is that Ed Lazar had a track record of duplicity all his own. That's a painful realization for a son already reviewing gory newsreels about the brutal slaying of his old man in the stairway of a parking garage. In the face of such coverage, Ed Lazar was murdered twice, his son bitterly contends -- once by mobsters, and once by the media.

Ironically, the testimony from one of the hit men who shot him sounds more credible. That "guy in the staircase was a ... coward," he sneers. What son wouldn't wish that weren't true?

SUSAN COMNINOS