Oldest Tricks in the Book

[T]he oldest trick in the book: belief 
that another is being fooled.
—Mary Margolies DeForest, Apollonius’ Argonautica (1994)

Oldest trick in the world.  All holymen are hip to it.  You gotta be what they want you to be.  Then you’ll succeed.
—Ken Wanio, “So You Want to be a Cab Driver” (2000)

“I was thinking that a beautiful woman could provide a, uh, diversion.”
    “Here we go again.  Cherchez la femme.  The oldest trick in the book.”
—Clive Cussler, Polar Shift (2005)

Baited by a broad—the oldest trick in the book.
—F. Paul Wilson, “The Lord’s Work,” The Mammoth Book of Dracula (1997)

“Trick” is dlllos in Homeric Greek, and the oldest known use of the term refers to a quite specific trick: baiting a good to catch a fish.  East and west, north and south, this is the oldest trick in the book.  No trickster has ever been credited with inventing a potato peeler, a gas meter, a catechism, or a tuning fork, but trickster invents the fish trap.
—Lewis Hyde, Trickster Makes This World (1998)

He had fallen for the oldest trick in the book, the one con-men called bait-and-switch: if you tell a lie and get caught, back up and tell half the truth.
—Stephen King, Needful Things (1991)

This is the oldest trick in the book.  These are the same people who attacked us earlier.  This is just round two.
—Diane Carey, Challenger (2000)

It was one of the oldest tricks in the book.  Ask some questions, wait a while, then ask ’em again.
—Ben Rehder, Buck Fever (2003)

You didn’t honestly expect me to believe that business about needing information for a good friend, did you?  That’s the oldest trick in the book.
—Debbie Macomber, One Night (1994)

First , dust off the oldest trick in the book.  Ask questions [to encourage close attention and active participation].
—Ted Burda, Baseball’s Hitting Secrets (2001)

Answer a question with a question.  For cops and salesmen, this was the oldest trick in the book.  And more often than not, it provided instant insight into a person’s motive for having asked the question in the first place.
—Allen E. Wiesen, The Cairo Conspiracy (2004)

I felt him trying to twist me to the right and down so I just relaxed and went with his energy.  Oldest trick in the book.  The sudden absence of resistance caught him off guard and I felt him slip a bit.
—Richard Marcinko, Violence of Action (2002)

—Willem A. Veenhoven, Case Studies on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms Vol. 3 (1976)