Dagmar Shaw series

Williams, Walter Jon. The Dagmar Shaw series (This Is Not a Game series).

From the Internet Speculative Fiction Database:[1]

Dagmar Shaw
1 This Is Not a Game (2009) [...] Translation:   n'est pas un jeu [French] (2010)
2 Deep State (2011) 
3 The Fourth Wall (2012)
Place/Publisher London, UK: Orbit.

4 "Diamonds from Tequila" (2014) [SF]; also as Diamanten aus Tequila [German] (2016). 
In Rogues as a long story, Gardner Dozois, George R. R. Martin, editors (NYC: Bantam, 2014); in UK: Titan Books.[2] Available as an ebook from Baen at link.[3]

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This Is Not a Game: Near-future thriller with the Russian Mafia, international finance[4] — and what is an on-line Alternate Reality Game (ARG):

[...] an interactive networked narrative that uses the real world as a platform and employs transmedia storytelling to deliver a story that may be altered by players' ideas or actions.

The form is defined by intense player involvement with a story that takes place in real time and evolves according to players' responses. Subsequently, it is shaped by characters that are actively controlled by the game's designers, as opposed to being controlled by an AI as in a computer or console video game. Players interact directly with characters in the game, solve plot-based challenges and puzzles, and collaborate as a community to analyze the story and coordinate real-life and online activities."[5] {Also: [6]}

A Review by Jedediah Berry on BookPage, April 2009 tells us,

The novel follows Dagmar Shaw, an architect of such [ARG] games. In her role as “puppetmaster” she has cunningly led players through countless twists and revelations by carefully weaving elements of her dangerous virtual worlds into our own. But the real world has turned suddenly dangerous for her [...].

When Dagmar — with assistance from her friends and associates at the Great Big Idea company — alters her game in an attempt to summon the aid of its players, the novel takes on fascinating new dimensions [...]. Spurred into action, the group mind of a million and more gamers eagerly applies its problem-solving skills to the real-life crisis.[7]

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The Fourth Wall: In the words of the standard blurb, "Dagmar Shaw is back in Hollywood, with a plan to lasso a series of emerging technologies into a revolutionary new form of entertainment".[8]

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"Diamonds from Tequila": From the standard blurb:

Sean Makin was a washed-up child actor, until Dagmar Shaw made him a star. Now he's starring in a big-budget action thriller that offers him the chance to become a box-office titan.

Except the action and the thrills aren't just in the movie. Dangerous and destabilizing new technology is floating around behind the scenes. Police and cartel lords lurk in the shadows. An assassin is on the loose, and has already claimed his first victim.[9]

A techno-thriller serious about technology.

RDE, finishing, 21Feb21