The Dream Merchants

This was Robbins' second novel and there is a marked improvement in the quality of the writing over his first, NEVER LOVE A STRANGER. Robbins appeared to have had a better editor this time around, but more than that, the tone is more even and the narrative more coherent than before.I've always appreciated the fact that Robbins didn't "dumb down" or spell everything out. The reader is asked to fill in a missing blank now and then. The plot of THE DREAM MERCHANTS is quite complicated, but with complexity comes variety and action, and Robbins was a master at keeping things moving.THE DREAM MERCHANTS deals with the early Hollywood moguls, the deals they negotiated, the swindles they perpetrated. It treats of movie stars and directors, technicians and PR spokespeople only insofar as they relate directly to the moguls. There is a fairly long subplot involving a spider woman of an actress with whom the protagonist, Johnny Edge, becomes involved. Aside from that, the plot revolves mostly around the Hollywood bigwigs' business deals. But having already read quite a bit about the making of movies from the technical end, I was interested in glimpsing Hollywood from a different perspective this time around.Bubba