Philip Glossman

Philip Glossman is a slippery government official in Odyssey, a man who turns up wherever bureaucratic power can be bent to bad ends, from the city council to state inspection teams. His real loyalty belongs to Dr. Regis Blackgaard, whose schemes he quietly advances from inside government offices. Glossman first clashed with the town's leading citizens years ago, when he picked apart Jenny Whittaker's plea to save the old Fillmore recreation building. He later tried to clear Tom Riley's apple farm for a state highway, and backed a fraudulent report that branded the farm's water toxic. His favorite weapon is official procedure itself: court orders, quarantines, and hazard rulings all serve his purposes. Smooth in public and scheming in private, he is a persistent adversary of John Avery Whittaker and Tom Riley.