I want to recommend miss smila's feeling for snow by peter hoeg. he's danish and its about a half-danish/half greenlander woman exisiting on unemployment bebefits who tries to solve why a greenlander boy fell from the roof of an apartment block.
its written in first person present tense and it works great, real tension. and its well-written.
(There's a movie version from 1997 with julia ormand - not as good as the book, but still worth a look.)
I think you missed the point of this thread. :lol: