"The Monster from Earth's End" by Murray Leinster

Interestingly, a couple decades after “Who Goes There?” John W. Campbell’s story 
which was the basis for The Thing from Another World (reviewed here ), Murray Leinster visited that neck of the woods for The Monster from Earth’s End, which is a splendid book despite a cover that looks like a naked blonde in the clutches of a giant booger.

It’s set on a remote Antarctic island serving as a way station for people and things going to and from the South Pole, and Leinster starts off splendidly, with the creepy arrival on the island of a plane carrying a mysterious cargo; most of the crew has vanished, and the pilot kills himself on landing.

From here on the tension never lets up, as Leinster takes up the mood Campbell established in his tale and sustains it for nearly two hundred pages of solid chills. I particularly like the way he draws his characters as individuals like those in the Howard Hawks film and lets them carry as much of the story as the monsters do. And trust me, these are some very creepy monsters indeed.

The Monster from Earth’s End was filmed (rare for a paperback original) as The Navy vs. the Night Monsters in 1966 (Dan Stumpf, Mysery*File)