Looking for a book about a guy who has to find someone lost in dreams/minds

Question

So i read this book at school in the earlier 00's and all I can remember is it's potentially set in a futuristic setting and this guy (maybe a private eye or just a finder of things) has this gift where he can go into people's minds or into a sort or dream world to find things or people. He may be trying to find a serial killer?

The only scene I vividly remember is in this dream world he comes across this grotesque baby like creature that is part of the (killer's?) soul or something.

Really vague description but I've been trying to remember for years and that's all I've got.

Answer 1

This could possibly be Greg Bear's Queen of Angels. From Wikipedia:

The central unifying element involves a famous writer, Emmanuel Goldsmith, who has committed a gruesome series of murders, a crime almost unheard of in the age of therapy. [...]

The third plot line concerns Martin Burke, a pioneer in psychotherapy who uses a technique which allows him to directly enter and interact with a patient's psychology - the "Country of the Mind" - through a sort of virtual reality. Although in a position of disgrace at the story's opening, Dr. Burke is given the opportunity to use his technique to explore Goldsmith's mind, which turns out to be one of the most fascinating and dangerous minds imaginable.

Answer 2

This sounds very like Michael Marshall Smith's Only Forward

The main character, Stark, works as a detective in a large city - it's a futuristic setting, and people have decided that they want to live in neighbourhoods organised by shared interests, so there's one called Colour which has crazy colour schemes, Noise (which is silent outside, because everyone has great sound-proofing) and an administration one, which tries to run everything, but is terribly bureaucratic - I believe there are thirty or more grades of ticket collectors on the subway.

Stark is a very special detective - he has the ability to enter something called Jeamland, which is humanity's shared dreamspace. He occasionally gets called on to find people who've gotten lost in there, or to stop things from there that have escaped into the real world.

It originally came out in 1994, so it's definitely within your timeframe.