Based on characters created by Kix Brooks (as the alter egos of country superstars, Brooks and Dunn), The Adventures of Slim and Howdy is a comic crime novel that chronicles the exploits of a couple of gifted but undiscovered guitar pickin’, honky tonk entertainin’, country singers.

When they met, it was like a head-on collision, though with a lot less blood and glass and hissing radiator steam. They didn’t need an ambulance or a tow truck, and nobody called the cops, though this one fella thought about it. Like a rung bell, it couldn’t be undone, things got dented, and it changed them both. It wasn’t the sort of thing one could insure against either, probably wasn’t the sort of thing you’d want to. Like trying to keep life from happening to you. Somewhere between impossible and a bad idea to begin with.

So call it what you will. Fate, the hand of God, kismet. Or just two paths crossing. Naming it wouldn’t make it any different from what it was.

And what it was, was the Adventures of Slim and Howdy.

It starts with a chance meeting on a used car lot in Beaumont, Texas. Slim and Howdy agree to partner up and ride together. But before they can even get out of town, they incur the undying wrath of Brushfire Boone Tate and a guy named Black Tony. A few days later they arrive in the Texas border town of Del Rio to play at the Lost and Found, a honky-tonk run by their old friend, the widow Jodie Lee. Along the way Slim and Howdy get caught up in a rigged poker game, encounter a snake handler with a do-it-yourself amputation kit, and have a run-in with Los Zetas, the deadly Mexican organized crime gang. Before it’s over, a beautiful woman gets kidnapped, suspects come crawling out of the cacti, and Slim and Howdy have to save the day.

Ronnie Dunn, Kendall Fitzhugh, Bill Fitzhugh and Kix Brooks