Sir John Templeton is regarded as one of the greatest value investors of all time. His well-timed moves into Japanese stocks when no one else would touch them and then back into US stock when no one went near those have earned him a reputation as a savvy bargain hunter.

His niece -- Lauren C. Templeton -- and her husband Scott Phillips have written a book devoted to his investment methods: Investing the Templeton Way: The Market-Beating Strategies of Value Investing's Legendary Bargain Hunter.

Unfortunately, there's nothing that's new here, and there are several infinitely better tomes devoted to the same principles of value investing. The tone is also annoying, written with a reverence for "Uncle John" as he is always referred to. This gets annoying. After about the 23rd reference, I somehow got the idea that he is her uncle.

The book has some bright spots: the chapter on shorting bubbles is interesting as very few investment books -- especially those focused on a value-based approach -- delve into short-selling.

Other than that, this book is surprisingly trite. Die hard value investors won't be able to pass this up, but everyone else probably should.