Three interconnected stories with main character going off the grid and drilling into the earth

Question

Many years ago I read a 3 short story book, possibly by a author named Ball. One short set up the other two with the main character designing and then avoiding being registered in a world-wide computer based registration system. second story, has the repeat main character and involved drilling deep into the earth's crust to harvest geothermal, but then something goes wrong and many die. Third story I am vague on but same main guy, but a murder plot.

Answer 1

This sounds like Roger Zelazny's My Name Is Legion, published in 1976 and containing three stories with a shared protagonist.

1. The protagonist, mostly unnamed, is a private investigator and troubleshooter who lives "off the grid", having been part of creating the global information network, he erased his tracks from it. (A trope also put to good use in John Brunner's 1975's The Shockwave Rider).
2. The first story in the collection, The Eve of RUMOKO, finds the protagonist dealing with a sabotage in a project using nuclear explosions deep in the earth's crust to create artifical islands.
3. The second story, Kjwalll'kje'k'koothai'lll'kje'k (which you didn't mention, but might ring a bell) deals with a purported dolphin attack.
4. The third story, Home Is the Hangman, involves a group of people being hunted down one by one, and a shared secret involving an AI, and is a fantastic story all in all.

Does this fit the bill?