Hitman: The Untold Story of Canada’s Deadliest Assassin

NATIONAL BESTSELLER | WINNER OF THE 2026 BRASS KNUCKLES AWARD FOR BEST NONFICTION CRIME BOOK

For Yves Trudeau, the blood was all business. An assassin for the Hells Angels in the ’70s and ’80s, Trudeau was known as Apache, the Mad Bumper, and the Mad Bomber. As a contract killer, he did his job so well that the bikers sometimes lent him out to other organized-crime empires in Montreal, including the east-end French gangs led by the deadly Dubois brothers and the upstart Irish Mafia in the west end.

Yves Trudeau remains one of Canada’s most prolific serial killers. When he narrowly missed being assassinated because he was in drug rehab, he turned government informant and confessed to his crimes, which included killing forty-three people. But as a witness, Trudeau was a disaster. And the sweetheart deal he got with little jail time for his murders caused outrage.

Award-winning writers Julian Sher and Lisa Fitterman tell the incredible story of how this assassin escaped the police and the justice system for over a decade. A compelling and revealing account of corruption, incompetence, and murder, Hitman is based on extensive research and exclusive new interviews with police, lawyers, and bikers who knew Yves “Apache” Trudeau.

JULIAN SHER is an award-winning investigative journalist, a documentary filmmaker, and the bestselling author of six books, including Angels of Death and The Road to Hell (with William Marsden). He directed the New York Times–CBC TV investigation “Nuclear Jihad,” which won the Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award, the broadcast journalism equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize. Julian Sher lives in Montreal.

LISA FITTERMAN is a reporter, an editor, and a columnist. Her work appears in newspapers and magazines across Canada. Her feature on the corruption scandal in Quebec, published in The Walrus, won a gold medal at the National Magazine Awards. A native of Vancouver, Lisa Fitterman has spent most of her professional life in Montreal.