Overnight Journeys, conversations and stories after dark

Richards (Outpost), the host of the BBC Radio 4 show Only After Dark, offers an atmospheric chronicle of late-night activities, jobs, and other goings-on. Many of the most fascinating chapters focus on infrastructure that continues to require maintenance long after most people are in bed--shipping terminals, railway yards, mail-sorting centers. The jobs range from thrilling and dangerous--manning a rescue helicopter flying over the ocean at night, staffing the annual 24-hour auto race at Le Mans--to the mundane, like parenting a newborn (which involves the author reading, and hence analyzing, Tove Jansson's Moominland Midwinter for its nocturnal themes) and working at a bakery. Later chapters begin to take on a bit of a recursive irony--in one, Richards tells the story of telling the story of a nighttime encounter during a different nighttime encounter; in another, he undergoes a sleep study to treat the insomnia that led him to make his career out of nighttime encounters in the first place. Richards combines exquisitely poetic ruminations ("3 a.m.'s the worst time--languishing at low tide, sad, soul out... oblivion o'clock") with man-on-the-street reporting that gives the surreal impression one really could run into just about anybody at night (including a philosophical Michael Fassbender). Readers will be engrossed. (June)