Romelu Lukaku scored twice as Everton climbed to fourth in the Premier League with an edgy win over a determined Newcastle.
Lukaku netted the first and third goals as well as feeding Ross Barkley for the second as the home side completely bossed the opening 45 minutes.
Substitute Yohan Cabaye superbly pulled one back at the start of the second period and on-loan QPR striker Loic Remy poked in a second to give the away supporters a slight hope of claiming a point.
Magpies boss Alan Pardew described his side's defending as "disturbing" and "unacceptable" and he has a case after the three Everton goals will ask serious questions of his back four.
Pardew will be ruing his side's first-half display where they were completely pinned back and ran riot but will take heart from their second-half display ahead of their visit to newcomers Cardiff on Saturday.
Toffees boss Roberto Martinez, in contrast, will be delighted with Everton's first-half performance and even more so that they scored three goals after losing at Fulham in the Capital One Cup in midweek when they created hosts of chances.
The result leaves Newcastle in 16th but they are currently three points off the drop zone and are only behind Manchester United, Swansea, Norwich and Stoke on goal difference.
In what was literally a game of two halves, Everton's intentions were immediately in place as they were on the front foot from the first whistle.
Lukaku had the ball in the back of the net early on but the offside flag correctly saved Newcastle. The reprieve, however, did not last much longer.
Two Belgians combined to give Everton the lead as Kevin Mirallas eased past Davide Santon and found his international team-mate. The on-loan Chelsea striker struck just outside the six-yard area as the ball bounced through Tim Krul and into the net to give Martinez' men the perfect start.
While the Belgian international put in a man-of-the-match performance, Barkley justifies England boss Roy Hodgson's decision to recall him into the national side as he almost doubled his team's lead after his snap-shot just flew past the left-hand side.
Newcastle rarely troubled Tim Howard in the first half and the hosts looked much more likely to get a second than the visitors of getting an equaliser.
And indeed they did find a second goal with Lukaku and Barkley at the heart of it. Lukaku fed the ball to Barkley who beat Yanga-M'Biwa and kept his composure to slot past Krul.
And it then went from bad to worse just seven minutes before half-time as Lukaku capitalised on some more awful defending to seemingly give the Toon a mountain to climb.
Newcastle gave themselves some hope at the start of the second-half when an unmarked Cabaye struck the ball brilliantly into the top right corner and made more of a game after a one-sided first period.
The match then became scrappy for most of the second-half but Newcastle never gave up hope and deservedly pulled a second goal back after Remy, similar to Lukaku's second, poked the ball home from close range.
But there was no big fightback as Everton held on to go above Chelsea and Manchester City.
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