Science Fiction book where a psychologist enters the dreams of a serial killer (not the movie "The Cell" but extraordinarily similar). Spoilers ahead.

[Melissa]

For years I believed that this book was adapted into the movie "The Cell" but I keep trying to find it and it is not, although I am convinced the screenwriter of "The Cell" must have plagiarized it. I read it before 1996, after buying it in a used bookstore, so it could have been published anytime before that. The book was one of those big old pulpy paperbacks, like a Dean Koontz, but the writer was not a name I knew or can remember. The book was in English but purchased in Bangkok, so could have had an Australian or British publisher, although I remember it as American.

SPOILER


(view spoiler)[ The main character is a female psychologist, hired to enter the dreams of a serial killer. She has spent many years investigating this dream entry technique but it may be her first time with a criminal? During the book she flies down to the Caribbean, where some action is set, as she has also just dyed the skin of her body jet black, in a cosmetic procedure that is available in the futuristic world. She repeatedly checks creases in her body to make sure that the color is staying.

The book was in a fantasy/scifi genre or possibly even horror. There were also sex scenes, effluvium drying on hotel-room sheets, that sort of thing.

The dream sequences are especially vivid and have stayed with me for decades. Most normal dreams that the psychologist enters are full of people, but when she goes into the serial killer's, they are barren hellscapes without human life. In one, disembodied limbs rain from the sky. In normal dreams, she can approach anyone to say "take me to your leader," essentially, and the dream person will lead her to the true self doing the dreaming. But with the serial killer, she can't find her way to the center. Eventually she finds him as a sort of king on a throne.

(hide spoiler)]

Yes, I know it sounds like a certain movie, and maybe I have conflated certain elements. But other elements are nothing alike. Please help me find this book, so someone can adapt it into an even better movie. Who doesn't need more psychologists stalking murderers in their dreams?

[Cestmoi]

Not an exact match to your description, but maybe
The Dream Master by Roger Zelazny?

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6...

[Melissa]

Not it, but does sound like a similar story -- or similar genre -- if you can call entering dreams a genre

[Robert]

According to IMDB, the movie Cell is an unofficial remake of the Sleepwalkers: Night Terrors (1997) (TV Episode) (goodreads doesn't permit me to link it). Unfortunately I haven't found any mention about it being based on a book.