"Even the church refuses him a resting place." The national headlines screamed the news: the bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese in Hamilton, Ontario, would not allow a church funeral for 73-year-old Johnny "Pops" Papalia, gunned down outside his vending machine business on May 31, 1997. The execution-style slaying of the ailing man dubbed "The Enforcer" capped a half-century of drug trafficking, extortion, illegal gambling, international money-laundering and murder. But who was Johnny Pops, the seemingly kindly old man, who just a week before his death had treated the kids on his street to popsicles? Award-winning journalist Adrian Humphreys has been reporting on the underworld in Canada for nine years and has become intimately acquainted with the life and misdeeds of Johnny Papalia. The Enforcer is his absorbing, investigative and meticulously researched true crime account.

Humphreys traces Papalia's family history, one that is synonymous with the rise of organized crime in Canada. With access to the private files of some of the world's foremost experts i