"I need a sanity check," said the President of the United States. "What?" I said. "The clowns in the Intelligence Community are so damned politicized that I have no idea whether what I'm getting is useful, actionable intelligence or political flapdoodle. So I need you to give it a sanity check." So begins math teacher and ex Naval Officer Alan Llewellyn's danger-fraught trek into the murky wilds of the U. S. Intelligence Community and the even more toxic forest of the Chinese Ministry of State Security. In Sanity Check, Alan is hired by Jim Kehoe, his high school classmate and now President of the U.S., to form a small secret group to execute a sanity check on material that Kehoe gets from the U.S. Intelligence Community. While setting up his sub rosa group, Alan stumbles upon covert activities of China's intelligence service which has agents deep undercover in Richmond, Virginia. Action oscillates between clandestine espionage and bloody violence in this shadow-war.