Review: Live to See Tomorrow, by Iris Johansen 2014

HERB JOHNSON- GAZETTE CONTRIBUTOR
There’s a story line, but mostly this is a book about a bunch of people on an adventure who just don’t get along with each other very well. They try. There are discussions and confrontations, but they all have secrets and don’t like to share.
CIA agent Catherine Ling is at the center of things. Her job is to go to Tibet and rescue Erin, a journalist who has been captured by the evil Kadmus and who is being tortured for information she refuses to divulge. She gets some help from her mentor and best friend Hu Chang. She and Hu Chang get along okay. They’ve been friends for years and he is sufficiently inscrutable that he seldom ruffles anyone’s feathers.
But a guy named Richard Cameron is another kettle of fish. He is the mysterious Guardian for a secret and powerful group that is intent upon establishing a special place where everybody lives in peace and prosperity . . . a Shangri-La based on the ancient Tibetan legend of Shambhala. The two of them have an immediate and almost unbelievable erotic attraction, which is tempered by Catherine’s extreme dislike of how Cameron tends to run roughshod over everyone. They fight a lot.
Cameron can do mental telepathy and get right inside anybody’s mind, which is an advantage. But Catherine is better at being really stubborn.
Also part of the mix is Catherine’s young son Luke, who was kidnapped by a bad person as a child and was trained to do bad things. He has a mind of his own he and his mom seldom see eye-to-eye. She feels he should stay somewhere safe and he is intent upon following her around in case she needs rescuing.
Even the evil Kadmus, who plans to steal the secret plans for the new society, can’t get along with his second-in-command. Kadmus makes plans that seldom get implemented, which tends to slow down his plan to take over the world.
The good guys win, but they spend a lot of time explaining why they don’t want to talk about certain things. Catherine and Cameron, toward the end, spend a lot of time exploring their incredible erotic attraction.