I admit to buying this one because the title struck me as odd.

The Dinosaur of the title is Jake Bento, a professional Time Traveler. He places and monitors miniature "wormholes" and leads expeditions through these holes into designated time periods in Earth's past. Jake is considered to be a loose cannon by his employers, but also one of the best in the business.

The Virgin in question, the beautiful, young paleontologist Peg on her first time trip, is not a virgin. She is well experienced sexually but not with men. The author goes out of his way to mention Peg's sexual preferences, then does nothing with this fact.

Peg freely admits she intends to use her attractiveness to control Jake and wanders around in the Mesozoic era totally nude. Jake, being the consummate professional, immediately shuts off his brain and thinks with his, well, he doesn't think at all.

Jake's lack of concentration on his job causes him to make some very stupid mistakes which jeopardize the expedition, along with their lives.

Peg is not blameless. She blithely does what she wants with seemingly no thought to the consequences. I call it the "Lois Lane syndrome." That is, the female fearlessly wanders into dangerous situations knowing that the male will always come running to save her.

And you can't call Garcia y Robertson a sexist since he makes both his main characters look equally dense.

By the way, there are real dinosaurs in the first and third section of the book. Garcia y Robertson scatters enough names and obscure facts around to let the reader know that he has researched the prehistoric era. More dinosaurs and less Jake's libido would have been welcome.

The middle section of the book has Jake and Peg wandering around through America's Midwest during the early 1800's. It seems that one cannot go directly from the Mesozoic era to Jake's time. One must traverse several eras through a series of wormhole gates located at various places on Earth. Jake's stupidity has forced the pair to make this leg of their journey the hard way.

Peg and Jake meet various figures from history, some of whom recognize that Jake is not what he seems. But the time travelers are in no real danger during this time (nothing at all would have happened if Peg could keep her mouth shut) and this is the weakest section of a weak book. By the way, I am sure Peg has a last name. It's just that Garcia y Robertson has forgotten to tell us what that it is.

The Virgin and the Dinosaur isn't the worst book I've read. But it is very forgettable.

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