It was the oldest trick in the book, but in her experience only the best tricks survived to become old tricks.
—Adam Fawer, Improbable (2005)

It was the oldest trick in the book, but we were acutely short on tricks at the moment.
—Jay Vick, Poisoned Medicine (2002)

I know, it's the oldest trick in the book, but it must work for some people or, 
I assume, it wouldn't be in the book at all.
—Barbara Pachter, The Jerk with the Cell Phone (2004)

[I was] thinking about how this had to be the oldest trick in the book, and wondering if there really was a book.
—Kelli Jae Baeli, Armchair Detective (2005)

It was the oldest trick in the book, but it had worked flawlessly.
—Clive Barker, Coldheart Canyon (2002)

I fell for the oldest trick in the book, and I wrote the damned book.
—Michael Silverhawk, Drifters: The Final Testament (2004)

[E]ven the oldest trick in the world still has new life in it if you give it some thought.
—Anthony Owen, "A Review of 'Cyclops' by Bob Farmer" (2000)

Sometimes in the movies, when the bad guy is holding a gun on the good guy, the good guy says, "It won't work, Scarfelli.  My men are right behind you with their guns drawn."  And the bad guy says, "You can't fool me, Murdoch, that's the oldest trick in the book."  Well, exactly what book are these guys talking about?  Have you ever seen a book with a bunch of tricks in it?  Magic tricks, maybe, but I don't think the thing with the guns would be in there, do you?  A prostitute might have a book of tricks, but once again, probably no mention of the two guys with the guns.  And anyway, even if there really were a book with a lot of tricks in it, how would you know which trick was the oldest?  They were all printed at the same time.  You'd have to say, "You can't fool me, Murdoch, that's the trick that appears earliest in the book."  But that's not good movie dialogue, is it?
—George Carlin, Brain Droppings (1997)

The oldest trick in the book is to divert attention from bad news to whatever good news you can find. —John Tracy, How to Read a Financial Report (2009)

The oldest trick in the book: disguising the identity of an author in order to give heft to substandard work. —Adam Langer, Ellington Boulevard (2009)

This classic distraction, apparently as old as shoelaces themselves, is cited in Wikipedia as one of the oldest tricks in the book (2006).

Technology is a trickster, and it has been so since the first culture hero taught the human tribe how to spin wool before he pulled it over our eyes.  The trickster shows how intelligence fares in an unpredictable and chaotic world; he beckons us through the open doors of innovation and traps us in the prison of unintended consequences.
—Erik Davis, Techgnosis (1998)

One of the oldest tricks in the book: the water bucket is a surprise your noisy pooch won’t forget.
—Matthew Van Kyrk, Guide to Training Your Own Dog (1996)

—Jean-Benoit Nadeau, Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong (2003)

“Use tools.  In this case, human tools.”
    Di hit her forehead with her palm.  “Oh hell!  The oldest trick in the book, and I forgot it!  My God, that’s Crowley’s old trick—and the Kali cult’s, and a dozen others’!”
—Mercedes Lackey, Burning Water (1992)

While I was fiddling with my woolly hat, giving, though I say so myself, a very cunning simulation of clumsiness and muddle, I simply slipped the salt cellar down my sleeve.  . . . It’s the oldest trick in the world, in fact . . . but nevertheless takes a great deal of skill and deftness.
—Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency (1987)

The oldest trick in the world is to attach oneself to some promising movement or other by simply putting on the uniform and leaving the gun at home.
—Douglas Wilson, Case for Classical Christian Education (2003)

Oldest trick in the book.  You don’t need surgery, and yet here are two masked surgeons in dirty robes in your room.
—M.C. Beaton, Death of a Bore (2005)

You buy me a drink, I gotta buy you two back.  Oldest trick in the book.
—Peter E. Price, Lifetime Members (2000)

“How did you come up with the Trojan horse?”
“The oldest trick in the world.”
—John Darnton, Neanderthal (1997)

“I think someone pulled the classic tombstone-fake-ID trick.”
    “That being?”
    “You got to a graveyard and find the tombstone of a dead child,” Myron said.  “Someone who would be about your age if he’d lived.  Then you write and request his birth certificate and paperwork and voil, you’ve set up the perfect fake ID.  Oldest trick in the book.”
—Harlan Coben, Darkest Fear (2000)

The oldest trick in the book.  Waldrip had entered the creek and walked upstream or downstream to throw them off.
—Ben Rehder, Flat Crazy (2004)

Descartes “proves God,” as Samuel Beckett puts it, “by exhaustion.”  As metaphysics goes, it’s the oldest trick in the book: first you take something away, then you complain that it isn’t there, and then you invent a theory grounded in—and compensating for—its very absence.  Deleuze and Guattari call it the Theology of Lack.  A seductive ruse, to be sure: once you accept the premises, you’ve already been suckered into the conclusions.
—Steven Shaviro, Doom Patrols (1996)

—Carl Safina, Song For the Blue Ocean (1999)

The old “Separated for 15 years, and back from the dead” ruse.
The oldest trick in the book.
—Ricky Lax, The Black Wizard with the White Thumb Tip (2002)

—David Stukas, Someone Killed His Boyfriend (2001)

This time-honored delay tactic has been cited as one of the oldest tricks in the book by Wikipedia (2006).