“The Dream Merchants” is the first novel in Robbins’ movie trilogy written in 1949 to be followed by “The Carpetbaggers” in 1961 and “The Inheritors” in 1969. It is one of his earliest novels, and it shows. Whilst the book has a good story line, charting the rise of its main protagonist Johnny Edge and the birth of the motion picture industry, the plotting and story telling is clunky and meandering, unlike the tightly written narratives of the novels which were to follow.

However many of the elements which Robbin would later use in his novel structures are present – the switching between first and third person and the books within books which go backwards and forwards in time. “The Carpetbaggers” is arguably Robbins’ best novel, and if you compare it to “The Dream Merchants”, you can see just how much he developed as a writer during the ten years between the two novels. Interestingly, unlike his later novels, there is very little sex and the book is probably more sentimental than his other novels. Robbins clearly made a decision at a point in his career to write novels which were more sexualised.

“The Dream Merchants”, like “A Stone for Danny Fisher”, falls into the category of his earlier writing which is more sentimental, less tightly written and with few sexual references. It is probably the weakest of the trilogy, and Robbins, no doubt drawing heavily on his experience in finance at Universal Pictures, populates the novels with numerous financial dealings and machinations, on an almost too frequent basis to the detriment of the plot.

If you are a fan of Robbins, read “The Dream Merchants”, but accept that you are reading an early book of a novelist who is still learning his craft and yet to write at his best. Perhaps what impresses most, is just how much he developed between this novel and his best.*--Amazon customer review Michael C Davies* (Reviewed in the United States, January 9, 2018 - 3 of 5 stars): Early Harold Robbins kicks off the first book in his movie trilogy.