It covers the escape of convict Lamar Pye and two accomplices from a penitentiary in Oklahoma, and highway patrol officer Bud Pewtie's attempts to track them down.

The opening chapters of Dirty White Boys articulately sets an impressionable tone for the remainder of the novel, as the story's main antagonist, Lamar Pye, a physically powerful, charismatic, aggressive, and intelligent "alpha male" in his late thirties, uses brutal violence to avoid being raped by a giant black inmate in the showers at McAlester State Penitentiary (the Mac).

The troopers are briefed about the escape by the embittered alcoholic Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation Lieutenant C. D. Henderson, a once star law enforcement officer who once served with Earl Swagger as a detective.

A series of tips leads the troopers to the remote farmhouse of an old couple, where the Pyes and Richard have taken refuge, arming themselves with the old man's firearms.

The Pyes flee to the remote house of a mentally ill young woman, Ruta Beth Tull, who has been writing confused letters to Richard about their "mystic connection".

Pewtie also returns to his affair with his dead partner's wife Holly and frustrations at the conflicting demands of his newfound romance and his family life continue to build.

After discussing the drawings with a local art teacher Bud also begins to suspect that Lamar is working on a tattoo, and obtains information about Jimmy Ky.

Pewtie fails at first to shoot Lamar with a rifle, his bullet deflected just enough by an unseen glass door to miss his intended target and wound Ruta.

The firefight leads to Lamar breaking out of a window using Holly as a shield while running across the fields towards a patch of trees with Pewtie chasing.

Lamar is motivated by his contempt for the seemingly arbitrary rules of normal society, his desire to protect his retarded cousin Odell, his own love of danger and his violent tendencies.

In 2014, Fox commissioned David Benioff and D. B. Weiss to write, direct and produce a feature film adaptation of Dirty White Boys.